The News In Poetry Day 26: Maggie’s Requiem

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-etiquette

How dare you tell us not to celebrate?
How dare you call it inappropriate?

“Don’t speak ill of the dead,”
Is so easily said
If you’ve been led to expect
That corpses command
Automatic respect.
But we remember:

We remember Section 28
(Do you know what it was like
To be called “faggot” or “dyke”
At school? To be under attack
And aware of a lack
Of any adults who’d have your back?
Because she
Forbade the promotion of homosexuality,
Called your two mums or two dads a pretend family?
How dare you defend this legacy?)

And we remember how she stirred up hate
(Do you think the Falklands war
Was about liberty and justice for all?
Or was it about empire and elections?
Joining in with the boys and their big steel erections.
Going into that war was a choice
And when soldiers died, some only boys
Maggie cried out “Rejoice”.
How dare you deny us our voice?)

Remember miners standing at the gates
(I’m northern born and old enough to know
What was lost.
Drive through Derbyshire today
And see mining equipment
Half buried in wet clay
Planted with struggling seedlings:
A dying community in a shallow grave
Too near the surface for the pain to ever really go away
She closed down the mines, we had to pay
You’ll deny us our closure, our say?)

It’s not schadenfreude.
We’re the society she denied.
We are the soldiers who died
We are the miners, the unions,
The three million unemployed.

This isn’t a party
It isn’t a wake.
It isn’t a fresh new page.
We’re not smiling
We’re gritting our teeth.

This is rage.