After he died
they all but renamed the pub
The Hagiographers’ Arms.
That corner seat
which to hear him talk
was the last true seat
of untainted Englishness
has now the feel of a shrine
where a candle flickers against
but never quite burns
a list of nationalities
he’d not have had sit there.
That torrent of unfounded hate
the first pint unleashed –
you’d have thought he’d held forth
with the moral purpose
of St Thomas Aquinas or
Mother Theresa.
The way the regulars
speak of him now
he might have been royalty.
