Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Poem for a baby

A lot of poets say they don't want to be Poet Laureate but they don't mind having a go at the job when it suits them.
I don't mind having a go myself. My Diana poem was a proper poem and I meant it whereas the Will and Kate wedding one was perhaps less so.
Herewith one for the lad. The BBC were left discussing if the BBC had given too much coverage to a story which, I hear Private Eye calls Woman Has Baby. Well, it's not long ago that Manchester United's manager retired, and the amount of attention given to that was disproprtionate to a lot of people's interest in it. Where is football on our radar now with the tennis man, the cyclist, the athletes and the cricketers making Britain look like a sporting powerhouse.


For George Alexander Louis 

They kept him to themselves for four short hours
while press reports said nothing had happened
and nothing happened for a few hours more. 

So, what do they know who can only wait
outside expensive buildings, their hungry
cameras cocked, ready to shoot, like royals 

on holiday waiting for grouse. Babies
all look the same, he must have thought, as yet
unable to ascertain if adult

life was only going to be a lot of
mundane questions and the obvious answers
they are bound to get. And he might be right.