Tea and Sympathy Won’t Cut the Mustard
(as was said by a DUP MP frustrated over the Brexit Protocol)

Tea and sympathy won’t cut the mustard.
It won’t skin a cat or make a horse drink
or warn bivouacking shepherds.
Its chicken-counting skills are nil.
Tea and sympathy won’t reveal
the forest or the piscine plenty of the sea.
It won’t spoil broth, gather moss or save nine.
It won’t teach an old dog anything.

Tea and sympathy wasn’t built in a day.
It won’t repel the general practitioner
or turn out to be the better part of valour.
It doesn’t blame its tools, make a summer
or sort the kind of sheep that hang with goats.
Tea and sympathy isn’t greener on the other
side. Its absence won’t cause an insurgency
of mice. Two of it won’t tango, sit
out of reach in a bush, make a right.

Juliet Antill

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Juliet Antill would be pleased to hear them.