Monday, February 17, 2020

From the Homefront

No, not a mansion, an estate,

Nor a chateau.  It’s just a house.
The taxes here are second rate.
No pheasantry.  The famous grouse
In the odd cupboards never call.
We have a lot.  Who has it all,

He works downtown.  His hands are clean,
He’s made of iron, cap-a-pie.
He is a gent we all have seen.
The women claim he ran away,
Just at proposal.  We are sure
His kind is weak and won’t endure

A liberal incumbency,
Yet there he is.  And here we are.
We mow our own.  And you can see
The oil which needs a newer car.
We have a vision: Saturday
We’re going to scrub those stains away,

Uncreak the door and love our wives
And make our children sweet and smart.
Life after life, lives after lives,
We barely finish where we start,
Exceptional in no detail,
Tepid and permanently frail.

The heat increases.  As we sink
Beneath our debts, the clocks explode.
No one has asked us what we think.
Our recent bills have come in code.
It’s later than it used to be,
We translate one.  But there are three.

A civil servant with a broom
Is dancing.  There’s a gravid fox
Has moved into the rumpus room
Where cellotape obstructs the locks.
Lawyers assumed to boardrooms rain
Upon the gold and fruited plain.

An organ grinder plies his trade
At 6 o’clock: This is the news.
We waltz in the diminished shade
Between our house and Duncan’s Mews.
The children write, We have been lent
By LSE to Parliament.

Thus we, content, replant the mint,
Repaint the windowbox, and wait.
My wife takes off her clothes.  Her hint
Is good enough.  We shall be late,
We shall be last.  We shall be saved,
Our names erased, our dates engraved.

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