Portraits of hatred 1

She was raised on a genteel form of hate
Fearful of things she tried to avoid
Single-parents, the unemployed
and foreigners: mainly Asians, Blacks and Jews

Her family was always one step ahead
Leap-frogging out to the suburbs
and the security brought by electric gates
in a discreetly hidden mews

She frets about Eastern Europeans
arriving like Jewish tailors of old
who provided the family with cheap coats
and an endless supply of anecdotes

She’s quite fond of the cleaner though
and the nanny proved indispensable
But she’s not so keen on their children
whose behaviour she finds reprehensible

Like that of her husband, a tax refugee
who’s shacked himself up with a whore in Tblisi
confirming all she’d ever been told
but reckons she already knew

Money’s tight and it looks like Ludmilla
who polished away through thick and thin
and knows what’s hiding in every bin
will leave with a week’s pay in lieu

And now, as her children fight and squabble
she stands at the window and quietly shudders
Remembering dinner-party twaddle
on the failings of single-mothers