Philip Higson
The rebel-substitute
It is not the fox they are hunting down,
Tearing to shreds
Like some resented parchment of listed rights.
It is any challenge from the formerly downtrodden
To their rigid atavistic egomania;
Any eruption of the once effortlessly crushed,
The once dismissible as less than human.
But they cannot dismiss them now,
And so they pursue this silently insolent stranger,
This stand-in for the upstarts they abhor.
They themselves become beastly on their mounts,
Gashing the turves with their unfeeling hooves,
While their hounds bay complacently for blood;
Splitting the mild air with their strident horns
That glitter as brightly as sabres at Peterloo.
At least they can, with total impunity,
Put down this casually loping red-flagged symbol
Of all who have ever risen against oppression.
And so they pin on him an identity
Of which he is wholly ignorant-innocent,
And follow him over green uncomplaining miles
With an inveterate black-souled vengefulness,
A feudal hatred that needs an appeasing death.
Page(s) 24
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