a late impression of a Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet –
from British Standards
This poet’s brow flashes
forked fire, borrows
catastrophe and chaos
from you know (by now)
who. Tories topple into
second jobs, third
jabs, topping up; or
‘watering up’ their fluid pledges
to the people, as bags
of unvaxxed bones in the ICU
leak, then leap in last gasp’s grip,
where each breath should be our
memento mori. Hand to mouth
on twenty quid a week
less, ‘more retail policy offers’,
they await ‘big picture stuff’.
Bo the man is, just
about, PM, unmasked,
groaning as he dumps
in the NHS privy voiding
with no paper his hangover gush,
avoiding his crawlbaby CBI porkypie babble.
They do not suffer his paper shuffling suffering,
dyspraxic disgrace, his comic tone.
He who undied for us, sudden, espies
his own unfeeling piggy eyes, a mirror flash
along a smooth knife’s nice length –
but in whose fevered, fiery hand?
Robert Sheppard
.