IF Butt!

IF Butt!

A bastardisation of Rudyard Kipling's Poem for modern Welsh times

If you can keep your mental health when all about you   

    are losing theirs and not realisin.

If you can trust others after watching 24 hour news

    but make allowance for the Benefit sanction   

If you can wait in the queue at any Post Office and not be tired by waiting, 

    or being lied about, by the neighbour's gossip, 

or by hatin, dun’t allow yerself to be hated, 

    And yet don’t look too good in charity shop clothes, 

nor talk too wise in case they think you been readin 

If you can dream—and not be caught by the teacher  

    If you can think without developing O.C.D   

If you can meet with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton 

    and treat those two imposters just the same;   

If you can bear to hear Owen Smith pretending he's Welsh 

    twisted, a  knave, smashing her back on her heels, 

or take your stuff to Cash Converters, broken, 

    and stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

    down the bookies which is closing down, 

and lose, and start again at your beginnings 

    and never moan like a professional moaner 

If you can force your heart and clogged arteries

    to serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so keep on at the Fairground Ride in Barry or Porthcawl 

    Will shouts ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with the crowds in Poundland and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Dai King

"How dare you call me common touch!" 

If neither your foe in Bryncethin nor loving friend in Tondu can hurt you, 

    If all men in Witherspoons count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

    With sixty seconds’worth of distance, without running out of puff   

Yours is the sod of Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And which is more

We'll never tell you to 
 "Man up, my son"! (As if!)