At Six O'Clock In the Morning Upon the Sixth of June
At six o’clock in the morning
Upon the sixth of June
Came Michael-Paul O’Higgins
Into this bustling world.
At school he was but middling,
He never cut much ice
In English, Maths, Geography,
In Scripture, Sport or Art.
In early adolescence
On the back seat of a bus
He found a tract on how we must
Seek out Salvation’s path.
Soon at the local gospel hall
He preached with fire and zeal.
“Put all your trust in Jesus,
In no prelate, prince or priest.”
He learned a thousand texts by heart,
Knew the number of the Beast,
And having read the Bible through,
Turned back to Genesis.
His school performance soon shot up,
He banished ease and sloth.
No dirty jokes would pass his lips,
Like they might from other folks.
N this world, too, is virtue blessed.
His hard work soon bore fruit.
He gained a place at Oxford.
His ambition was the Church.
But lofty halls of learning
May stifle simple faith,
And Michael-Paul had fits of doubt
That caused his lapse from grace.
He switched to Economics
And flirted with Karl Marx.
To a secular millennium
He strove to find the path.
Soon active carrying banners,
Their colour deep-dyed red,
He got caught up in fisticuffs
And was bundled off to clink.
They noted his particulars,
Affiliations, too.
The magistrate just said “tut tut”
And he was free to go.
However minor was this brush,
He aimed to live it down.
He learned to mind his P’s and Q’s
And be just plain bourgeois.
Forgetting youth’s illusions,
For a salary safe and sure
Than ran into six figures
He sold Babylon his soul.
Up higher, ever higher,
He climbed each echelon
Until the plum job of his dreams
Was juggling on his nose.
But in some data memory bank
Was that record from his past,
The which, recalled in a routine check,
Gummed up his future plans.
He lost his job, his house, his wife,
He lost his heart and soul,
And now he’s palely loitering
In the long queue for the dole.
O wise man, give an answer,
O say what devil’s art
Has turned his world reformer,
This promising performer,
Into a mere statistic
On an economic chart?
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2017
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