For William Golding
Hunched behind a lectern
This man in yellow shirt
And bright blue tie
Derides processional ants
Who carry through the streets
Inflated idols. Blue eyes glint
Impiously above brown rims,
A tide of gleeful epithets
Cut by casual colloquy,
Punctures idols of the tribe,
Needles the worshippers.
Marx crumples at his pin-pricks,
A door thuds: an ant has exited.
The voice asserts it fears
Its own asseveration,
But flows on undisturbed
By such departures.
Wonder is the start of wisdom,
Wonderment silvers faith.
The mirroring god, totem
Of its own predicament,
Hunts and is haunted
By devils only present
At a non-existent point.
Multiplicity seethes
From processional words.
Metaphor transforms
The centre of his world.
A man whom seventy years
Are testing to destruction,
He mocks with impish piety
All idols of himself.
He is more, in canary shirt,
Grey nimbus round the mouth,
White wisps above the ears,
Than a clean category.
He gleams at us and labours
Under anguish of his joy:
Take care to make your own god,
Down here in hell
A newness gathers strength
When the devil hunts us down.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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