Four Poems

Rural England

The short afternoons,
the evenings drawing in,
the empty road that leads outside
to nowhere.
To think is rebellion.

I am in the empty schoolroom
reading.
The villagers are gathering outside,
maybe with stones,
maybe to cheer the returning
Conservative M.P.

'I don't give tuppence for any of them.
'I never took my hat off to no squire.
Bootlickers the lot.'

Like you said,
the road outside
...