BANQUET Poem by Paula Cunningham

O squat round Banquet
margarine tub, your black
and blue SUPERSOFT letters,

on permanent Special,
Sleek Sentinel, for weeks
you have held centre-stage.

Flanked by the HP sauce
and the salt, you're one fifth
of the Kerrygold butter

we crave. Our throats
burn gold with the blur
of the buttercup's disc.

We freeze when the yellowy
ingot appears; it sweats
on its rose-spattered plate.

O Banquet, Pale Champion
Duller of Hunger, observe us now
shovelling butter.

It's not a bit of wonder
it never lasts.