Up at a Villa

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

So, it felt alright at first, but now you rabbit on

expressing indisputable views on everything, in vivid

agreement with yourself, reinforcing the big Yes,

it having been determined that all popes and poets

can be no more than cocksuckers, arseholes, or merely both.

You smile with anger, red behind rimless glasses,

and right. Well, you could hardly be wrong, eh?

Even the pleasant CD cannot stem your fucking flow;

I wouldn’t dare to try, I tell you that.

Why is all this display of petty power so important

now to you: pretty well always has been. And why

does the furious cortex hunger after correctness,

in just about everything? Buggered if I know,

but it must have been much like this

ever since you swaggered out of your wicker cradle

and set about ruling the world; you had the measure

of left and right, art, money, sexual deviation

and all the main current of thought –

yes, I’ll have another splash of the red, why not.

Your garden flourishes outside in fruitful technicolour,

skilfully maintained, of course, by those expert hands

while you see through the cloudy glass of each political party

as well as the seamiest anti-semites and mining thugs,

because you smell the due stink in everything,

the dirt that rots every pocket. Yes, you are bloody well like

those puritans you affect to hate so much, thin churchy rats.

Every phony, you force us to understand, has been fattened up

on taxpayers’ money. No scholar is not a fake,

bar those few honest sods you happen to endorse

or at least agree with, today: those commonly known

as your disciples, docile ephebes and victims,

who wouldn’t answer back in a month of Sundays.

We admire your dense green gardening, drink on,

nary a soul half-daring to answer back or argue – after all

who wants his or her noggin blasted off with a phrase

like fart-warmed thunder? Certainly not yours truly.

We’ll go on laughing then into the deep lull of evening.

After all, tomorrow we’re driving back to the city.