Fenland Sketch: 4

The editor of "Island" has kindly scheduled Fenland Sketch 1 for publication in his magazine's November edition. Whilst commenting on that poem, he wrote that if his neighbour's God was watching him, he'd bugger a goat on the front lawn.

For those who haven't worked out that most of my poems written in the first person aren't actually written in my first person, let me swear that, honest, this isn't me speaking, especially in that last stanza!

I rarely use obscure words, but I do here: cow is to bovine as goat is to caprine.

I thank you for your note, in which you write
about the acts you threaten in a bum
caprine. I didn't say (I'd thought it trite)
that I'm a secret agent for The Scum,

for which I dig in bins throughout the night
(I raid the rich and famous) looking for
hysteria to push in black and white.
To you, I shall admit, I've been a bore,

I told my editor the things you say,
I rue my lack of nous. He's sent a pan
of journalist to hunt around your neigh-
bourhood; he hopes to find a fan of Man-

chester United (we've got Beckham un-
der contract). If you wake to see, one day,
a chamoise sweetly tempting in the sun,
resist that goat, for David B, your neigh-

bour's football God, awaits, binoculars
in hand, to watch. The cameraman will flash
and snap, the journalist will crawl the bars,
pretending he was there. A grand, in cash,

will cheer your neighbour's life, and you'd go in
a chat show agent's set of guests, sunk low
to let the coucherati sneer at sin;
hypocrisy is good TV, you know.

Of course, I don't expect all this to make
a difference, to wit, your acumen
in publishing my works. I'll have my cake
and scoff it, for your moment in The Scum.