THE FINAL BURIAL

Today a state of public mourning was declared,
rang its alarm across the empty city,
rolled out the clinking coke cans on its breezes,
snatches of Dolby sound, asthmatic wheezes,
boasting the menaces of its graffiti.
The council blocks, tin-lidded, held their tongues and stared.

In opulence of walled-in streets
the cherry-bloom confetti
sailed down to sanction our great wealth
while garbage fell with idle stealth,
bred maggots' grey spaghetti
in the decaying mean retreats
of inner city's squalid stench.
Half-masted plastics blowing,
the concrete caissons lidded down,
the grieving nails, the dying town,
we auction off: they're going,
gone and gone. The slogan is 'retrench'.

Today a state of emergency was decreed,
drafted by suburbs wet with fuchsia tears:
'Send out the bin men packing guns and knives,
cleanse all those streets of husbands, kids and wives
threatening laburnum wealth and sloe gin cheers
with countervailing acquisitiveness and greed.'

To keep suburbia safe and clean
and money circulating
among perfumed and honeyed hands,
in contest with poor eastern lands,
be quite discriminating:
down-size your firm and make it lean.
If leanness means those welfare bums
should lose some fat and suffer,
tough luck! We'll save our dividends,
dividing them among our friends -
and if we don't, then tougher!
We're safe if they remain in slums.

Today there was a state of war proclaimed.
After the funeral of hope,
it occupied a grave in unmarked ground.
Survivors took kalashnikovs, stood round
shouting expletives, taking dope.
Goes without saying, they were killed or maimed.