42 
Conservative Rose 
storage 
of British Empire-made pot-pourri 
of dry dead men making a sweetened smell 
among a shrivelled collectivity 
Which august dust 
stirred by 
the trouser-striped prongs of statesmanship 
(whenever politic) 
rises upon the puff of press alarum 
and whirling itself 
deliriously around the unseen 
Bolshevik subsides 
in ashy circularity 
‘a wreath’ upon the unknown 
soldier’s grave 
And Jehovah strikes, 
through the fetish 
of the island hedges, 
Exodus 
who on his holiday 
(induced 
by the insiduous pink 
of Albion’s ideal) 
is looking for a rose 
And the rose 
rises 
from the green 
of a green lane 
rosily-stubborn 
and robustly round 
Under a pink print 
sunbonnet 
the village maid 
scowls at the heathen