It’ll all be in the past soon, like the world wars
Or the Holocaust. But leaving it
Is never easy – the memory
Is imprinted forever in the very core
Of my soul, in yours. In this.
I won’t forget you. Not least
That first day when you introduced yourself
To the world, hiding behind oval glasses,
And I barely knew you. Except the epithet
“Mussolini” had attached itself quite quickly.
That was how they looked after you
In those juvenile days, railing against their better wit,
Grey-jacketed shadows skulking in the corridors.
Yet you proved yourself
To be most reliable, rising through the ranks
Like all hotshot lawyers,
Eventually claiming every coveted prize.
I didn’t mind your victory. You deserved it.
We’ll all be looking to you now
To make history, my elder
Younger statesman, with another of those unobtrusively
Clear-noted turns of your voice, a truly
Moral oracle.
And I’ll be sitting on the sidelines somewhere,
Holed up in an office, fingers tapping away furiously
On an ageing keyboard, much like at this very moment,
Except the result won’t be the lilting vowels
Of poetry, but the pithy, tough-nosed consonants
Of English prose. Someday, I’ll put your triumphant photo
On the front page, where your name makes the headlines
Regularly, in frank bold font, always for the right reasons.
They’ll remember you for those glorious policies
Signed forever into a faceless constitution,
The blind law of justice,
The face never just a name in the history books,
And all my poems still lie in some dusty cabinet
Waiting to be found.
