Ballad of Lucy Kryton
“There will not be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime”, Margaret Thatcher
The morning sun falls whitely on
the lashes of Lucy Kryton.
Her blondeness fully insured
against theft, fire
and termites. Her forehead
the hard reality
that care of both
the elderly and the daft
are best handled
by entrepreneurs.
Her navy dress
an incentive scheme for foreign investors.
Her compassion, a teenager taught failure
to honour thy father and mother leads
to a wet sleeping bag in a doorway
the government won’t be
rescuing you from. She knows
hard cases make bad exceptions,
of which she’ll be making none;
that for many people in this country
slavery and the right
of Nigerian taxi drivers
to marry each other
are issues of conscience
which transcend politics.
Her fiscal policy is dampness moving
down other people’s walls.
The finest mind
to come out of that part of Claremorris
in a long time. Her Ireland of the future
is an auld fella with a wig
at Mass on a Monday
somewhere in Mayo,
as the evening sun bounces savagely
off the achievements of Lucy Kryton,
the day the laughter suddenly stops
and she’s all that there is.