Aidan Semmens
FUN
Across the border
the root toot
of moneyed intervention
– we dislike the sound,
the smells, suggested threat;
this is literary poison:
basking diplomats scurry off
to pen a codex
to the report
of stunned landscapes,
starving ideologies.
Later reading
you grasp the implications
as you might the hand of
a neighbour's child
protruding from
an accidental building.
Being catholic (of taste),
orthodox (of preconception),
I won't demand an explanation;
how you read the thing
or the balance-sheet of blame,
motives. England expects,
and will damn well get
what it wants.
Out here, suns blare and
winds cough. We write home
a holiday letter.
Copyright Aidan Semmens 1980
