Photo Paul Reynolds

Kevin Higgins regularly sends us in the odd poem. You might know him from the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets and in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: Modern War Poems.

This one is called The Ballad of Lucy Kryton:

“There will not be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime”,  Margaret Thatcher

The morning sun falls whitely on

the lashes of Lucy Kryton.

Her blondeness fully insured

against theft, fire

and termites. Her forehead

the hard reality

that care of both

the elderly and the daft

are best handled

by entrepreneurs.

Her navy dress

an incentive scheme for foreign investors.

Her compassion, a teenager taught failure

to honour thy father and mother leads

to a wet sleeping bag in a doorway

the government won’t be

rescuing you from. She knows

hard cases make bad exceptions,

of which she’ll be making none;

that for many people in this country

slavery and the right

of Nigerian taxi drivers

to marry each other

are issues of conscience

which transcend politics.

Her fiscal policy is dampness moving

down other people’s walls.

The finest mind

to come out of that part of Claremorris

in a long time. Her Ireland of the future

is an auld fella with a wig

at Mass on a Monday

somewhere in Mayo,

as the evening sun bounces savagely

off the achievements of Lucy Kryton,

the day the laughter suddenly stops

and she’s all that there is.

Kevin’s fourth collection of poems is out now and called The Ghost In The Lobby. His blog can be read here.