You say the old AB masters never got it wrong,
But when Hockney painted his death of the imagination
It was a lost African against a usurious yellow sky
And the African a hapless creature who had drawn himself
Ten miles on two legs, stared in amazement
To see the man who once fed him from his refugee plate
Reduced to this.
So I felt this week, the vile soil and everything upon it—
The African Refugee kicked from the table
Before his own Olympic team, and even the honest unpicking
Of sport performed nightly and in seclusion.
Like any Immigrant, a Knight Templar, his armour is resignation
Although I thought I would lift the bow myself
And draw.
By the morning he is gone
And what to make of this?
The Leeds prostitutes hang from a beam like mice
The brave man, now a refugee with the Yorkshire police.
And some say that being a refugee is now much better
And others, that it is worse.
So Olympic order was restored
I stared in AB amazement