A General Election. Poem by Michael Walker

Last Saturday I voted in a general election,
about the fifteenth time I have voted since twenty-one:
I forget which candidates I voted for, past and recent,
but I remember the electorates clearly enough.

Last Saturday I went out with a vague hope that democracy
still mattered in a conformist monolithic society.
I had not seen much of the campaign on television,
but I knew enough to tick the right boxes without hesitation.



I used to drive to meetings in city halls where the candidates
had to cope with hecklers and interjections, like stand-up comics.
Those speeches, with interjections and humour, were different from today's leaders' debates,
in front of a small audience cherry-picked for television, though T.V. still demands an actor's skills.


One memorable Friday night I went to a Labour campaign get-together
and there, not mixing it with many other Party members,
Italked at some length to the silver-toned suntanned speaker
Big Norm on his way to the top.

- 26,27 September,2017.