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