Poetry

Quatrains for a New World Order

i.m. Adrian Mitchell 1932-2008

Tom Hubbard

1
Ye Banks and Buroos of bonny Boom
And Bust, of Boost and boney bum:
Come, whirl a gig upon our tomb.
Pray, weep for us: we were so dumb.

2
The Minister at the podium
Hands out vinegar lollipops,
Stops and stares,
Blethers on about shared values and even more (or less) valued shares.

3
Read The Hampstead Review of Books
In its Guardianly glory,
Assisting a tribal mother
In selling her son's sad story.

4
I mind of a New England factory:
Women thread-workers struck for equal pay;
While at the local university
Profs knitted arguments from day to day,

Thrusting themselves right up the tenure-track,
With Fair Trade jewelry dangling from their wrists.
Their sisters lost the fight and shuffled back,
Asking themselves: Where were those Feminists?

5
This is the new dialectic:
Being uptight in a downturn.
Carlyle was merely dyspeptic,
And Ruskin was nuts, we learn,

As was Blake. Who now reads Marx
On commodity fetish, eh?
Settle down. Be very afraid.
We’ve got your DNA.

6
Fascism's a fashion statement. Come, take my invisible hand,
For Auld Lang Europe's sake. Join Sarkolusconi's band.
Cover your arse in Britishness and fix some referendum:
You may exploit folk (by all means) but you must not offend them.

Tom Hubbard is a novelist and poet