This is the age of big miracles; an enlightened administration
Can see effortlessly through the misty isinglass of the state,
The two-way mirrors of bureaucratic obfuscations
Are transparent as tears to their superhuman eyes,
These sophist philosopher kings, these philistine pharaohs,
These dapper-suited townhouses of Savile Row lapel –
They have delivered us from central government interference
And emancipated our aspirations, liberated our dormant
Localisms of heart, our castles of ambitions,
Now Need is disrespectful – they have led us to the land
Of broken promises where we may splash in the cleansing
Waters of our animal instincts, immerse ourselves as sharks,
Comb beds of shattered glass… Their miracles are plenty
And prolific and all the more miraculous for daily proofs,
Week by week, month by month, to the awe of thousands
Of witnesses – no mass hallucination can be harnessed
On such a vast scale! – these glad tidings must be real…
In one fell swoop they’ve shown it’s possible to cap financial
Scraps for keeping shelter without the need for rent controls;
To make scores homeless amid mushroom crops of second homes …
Their legerdemain is relentless: all stats are as rabbits out of hats
For they work wonders: repatriate travellers back to the tracks;
They magic scores of volunteers where once there were
Simply soul-destroying jobs bribing souls with fiscal carrots –
But now those drones are better off in spirit serving cold-called
Communities without the moral stain of cash for labour,
That contractual prostitution of oneself as economic
Commodity – all gone now! This is a new socialism:
The material martyrdom of the self for the good of the majority
And all to the salutes of Czars who know themselves ethically
Inferior for not being able to hack such altruism, at least
Not on a full-time basis, not on any-time basis… These
Pin-striped miracle workers have inspired salvation camps
Pitched under St Paul’s spires, to administer to our spiritual
Needs through tented protests, moral marquees,
And remind us just how alfresco our democracy can be,
While episcopacies of speculating Corporations
Conspire to serve court orders, shadowy Protestant monks
Floating through cloistered Paternoster recesses,
Bowed and cowled in front of aesthete screens,
Take all the city’s sins on themselves, salivating libations
To the indivisible markets – our unseen regulators,
Whose minted omnipresence humbles us as it calculates
Our indulgences, and transcends us in its targets…
Alan Morrison