12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode

(after Keats)

My heart aches, and a drowsy dumbness pains
  My tense brain as I recall, as if still drunk,
The man Patten who led me down a dismal drain
  To depths other teachers Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not for pleasure to remember our lot,
  But being happy as Christmas comes
    One should be light-winged Dyrad of the trees
      And aspire to some noble plot
To have him expired for what he's done
  And rhyme such dreams with a full-throated ease.

- 1994 -

[NB John Patten was the then Tory Secretary of State for Education]