They say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

So why are there so many flies on Vinegar Hill?

Black-bodied, red-eyed sons of Satan

Buzzing, droning across the stones

Tasting them with their feet

Do they taste death still?

Are these the children of 1798

Whose fathers crawled across rosy flesh grown pale

And nibbled the cheeks of innocence?

Does the decay on their toes bring back memories

Of the day when bankers and farmers,

Artists and lawyers,

Bachelors and family men

Took up arms against each other

For nations and for glory?

Do they remember the charge of red jackets,

The young men, the future of our kind,

Flushed with victory, splattered with blood,

As they trampled the golden grass to the peak

Only to find their enemies women, their foes babes?

And then these men, no different from us,

Found they could not stop,

And poured out death and lust on the helpless,

On the beautiful and pure,

On the agonized, the screaming, the bewildered,

And they shuddered in despair

As they discovered

They liked it.

So why should the flies not swarm Vinegar Hill

When the Lord of the Flies is its victor and conqueror?