How it makes of your face a stone
that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,
clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue
an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand
a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh
a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs
hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice
that can throw no six. How it takes the breath
away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,
makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,
of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –
politics – to your education education education; shouts this –
Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your
conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS
Carol Ann Duffy’s first poem as Poet Laureate published in The Guardian yesterday is a fiery, spirited denouncement of the obfuscation and duplicity of those who identify themselves as our representatives in parliament. The transformations of power and publicity are vehemently dissected here and how we recognise them all…politics is Faustian indeed..I especially enjoyed the serpentive sounds of the poem…a fallen world indeed without even the merest hint of redemption or Lamia -like complexity or compassion. The metamorphosis from human being to mechanised deceit is compressed..(or should I say crushed as this underlines the spiritual aridity?) into this short poem through a complete autopsy on the ironically self-less politician. A poem to be read out aloud and spat out…tonality is all!
Once again I am drawn back to Shelley’s wonderful Ozymandias one of the most visually arresting poems of power’s corruption and seduction every written. Has the word ‘desert’ ever communicated such loneliness?