by Alan Morrison
As Chief Whip Alan Campbell left Cabinet
On Tuesday 1st July
Walking along the sun-pounded pavement
Of Downing Street the day of the vote
On the Pathways to Poverty green paper
He turned his head briefly to take note
Of an orangey flash of fox in broad daylight
All brush-tail & soot-black paws
Fleeing past him in the opposite direction—
Was it an augur, portent or omen?
Was the fox a manifest metaphor
For those deemed economically inactive
Who’ve been hounded & hunted for political sport
By ongoing governments no matter the hue
Of their pleated acetate rosettes?
After fourteen years of the Tory hunt
It seems they’re due for another seasonal culling
& now by Labour, unconscionably Blue,
Baying for their depleted benefits,
The sick & disabled once more to be
Shrunk & mounted as atrophied trophies
Of departmental penny-pinching on
The soundproof walls of Caxton House,
Notorious Whitehall hunting lodge—
(Or perhaps the Chief Whip thought it a sign
That he might be descended from Colin Campbell
Of Glenure, aka the quisling ‘Red Fox’?)
How odd that at such symbolic moments on cue
Symbols bound embodied into disembodied view.
