IN PRAISE OF GREGGS AND CAVAFY

When the war starts, it won’t be obvious.

You'll stroll past your empty house,

go shopping, return to find

it on fire, surrounded by

progressives wearing rainbows.

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Or on Cornmarket, a crowd

of whirling Muslim dancers

will swell until the Old Bill

corrals them to go sniffing

for ‘the far right’ - which means you.

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Flick a switch but get nothing.

Lights are down since net zero,

when intellect just vanished

without smoke, its memory

guffawed about by degree

---

blaggers, explaining how war

started for them when they dreamt

things and imagined freedom

for themselves by inclusion

of every barbarian.

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Also on Cornmarket is

this crap busker, bellowing

songs which sounded terrible

in their trite originals.

Yet I must bring some good news.

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This funds his son who attends

Magdalen College School, so

proving why doing something

today is all that matters,

like eating Greggs sausage rolls.