By Christopher Norris
Today a man knocked at my door,
Out canvassing for Labour.
‘No chance’, I said; ‘you might have more
Luck with my next-door neighbour’.
But then I thought: he could be me,
Was me, until first Blair,
Then Starmer came along so he,
My caller, standing there
As I did once, could only say
‘I know, I know’, and meet
My eye a moment, look away,
Then turn toward the street.
More needed saying, so I felt,
And that for both our sakes,
And for the millions whom they’d dealt
Low blows for highest stakes.
‘I know it’s hard for you to hear’,
I said, ‘but please believe:
I bring no flea to plague the ear
Of one with much to grieve.
He’s finished off what Blair began,
Ensured that every ruse
Of corporate capital goes to plan
As ‘market forces’ choose.
He’s sent off arms to Israel,
Done nothing to conceal
His Zionist leanings, or dispel
Those signs of outright zeal
For genocide in one we deemed
Well-versed in human rights,
But navigating now, it seemed,
By Eichmann’s moral lights.
He’s put two fingers up to those
Who say “Sir Keir, they got
It wrong, your parents, when they chose
That name in hopes you’d slot,
As if by right, into the role
Of Hardie, he who’d know
Full well how you’d betray his goal:
To bring the mighty low!”’.
And so it went, the doorstep talk
With scarce a gap between
Us two beyond what each might chalk
Up to the changing scene
And choice of whom we chiefly cursed –
Me Blair, him Starmer – for
The crimes in office we deemed worst
Of those our Party bore.
We’d not permit ourselves to eke
It out, this brief exchange
Of views that neither wished to speak
Direct and thus derange
The very British protocol
That ruled we not make plain
The bitterness that took its toll,
The half-acknowledged pain.
She’ll more than likely think: why then
Fall back on such repressed
Speech-habits as you party-men
Deploy as if to test
The perilous terrain where hope
Once found a bedrock stay
But where erosion left small scope
For aught but shared dismay.
I went indoors and told my wife
What passed between us two
Scarred witnesses to that mid-life
Capsize of ship and crew.
And then it was the thought recurred
Of the turned face he kept
From wincing at my every word,
And at that thought I wept.
