HIPPO-BRIT

The deft-coiffured ex-premier
Sat perfect-poised in Sunday suit:
Could one, so blest with savoir-faire,
Be merely just a lying brute?

   Our anxious hearts seem far more frail,
Yearning for those well worth our trust;
In Public Life if such Faith fail
Then solid Truth becomes but dust.

   So did our premier's speeches err,
When compassing the deaths of men?
Or was the Public Truth stripped bare,
By hammy gestures mis-spoken?

   This premier could never show
The proof for what proved not to be;
So now he claimed that none could know
What twice a million folk could see.

   On questioning, the premier's tone
Betrayed fake hesitations, odd
In one we'd known a hot-line own
To certainty and to his God.

   How now is spent the premier's day?
Envoying peace against war's night -
If still his God's mysterious way
Can tell his prating from his flight.

   From Holy Land he's taken wing
And, crossing, rises from new kneelers
In hope his seeming efforts bring
A saving end to Papal feelers.

   Will sacrificed blood wash him clean
And unregretful time enfold
Him in the arms of history's sheen -
A fake crusader stuffed with gold?

   Yet though he feel washed white as snows,
By grateful dead at last embraced,
Each Briton's broken Trust still knows
Truth's gale was by his breath Disgraced.

                    (Apologies to T. S. Eliot)