It was part of an email chain of tossed off poems. Sending little impromptu things back & forth
The poem is
very tender in the Marxist dawn. Faint
uprising of factory sun. Streamers
of ersatz light leaving a taste of
burnt toast in the mouth. Flashback
of mist over the playing fields, the
crunchy grass stiff with frost and
all favours overdrawn leaving us exposed
on the turbulent ridge. Dispatch box
choked up forsaken by great and good alike.
It was bred into you.
The deferential posture,
the stoop of back and rounded shoulders.
The tentative expression, not to be so bold
and on the sweep of landscaped parkland-
The Afghan hound and the soft leather boots, knee high, black, brisk and polished.
The English delight in dogs and the implicit
sadism of that. Always folded
into another higher, greater order of complexity.
Deformed into a knot of duty.