The Last Days of Thatcher

We watch Margaret Thatcher’s
bloated face and cloudy mind;
remember the hardlined features,
the decisive fist, the woman not for turning;
as she stumbles in jumble-brain confusion;
discharged from hospital;
not long to go now.

What is the moral?
Can we forget
the Argentine, the Irish dead
as we watch an old woman’s light of life fade?
Whose side are we on now?
A legacy of run down mining towns,
council house waiting lists:
should we celebrate the stagnant wages
and tax-free super rich?

An architect of a Tory world:
More police on the streets, more alienation,
more violence, more police on the streets…
the anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-human.
Or should we mourn the loss of collectivism,
and the futures she destroyed?

Her ghostly, fatter, stupider self
paces the corridors of hospitals and private nursing homes;
too distinguished a figure to slide away silently to Switzerland
and quietly slip into expensive oblivion.
Now the poltergeist society which she declared dead,
clamours excitedly to dance on her grave.
They’d better bury her in Westminster Abbey
or at least somewhere with plenty of security cameras.