It feels like it did all those years ago:
close your eyes and picture the quiff and smile.
Promise of Camelot, no hint of guile,
until that day in November, a blow
to baby boomers’ hopes for the future.
Now barrack for Obama, a new dawn,
a surgeon for the brave new world is born
who fixes gaping wounds with a suture.
Country like a patient anaesthetised:
a trusting smile on a slumbering face
surrendering itself to healing hands;
but what lurks there, on that table disguised,
waiting to ride on a needle stick trace?
A virus we hope Obama withstands.