The Sixties

I sit in a room in two thousand and twelve
With my wife and two very old friends.
I accidentally start the tape player and it begins to play
"Beautiful People" by Melanie
And suddenly I am transported back more than forty years
To a time when the world seemed
Full of hope and love,
When everything was
Going to be all right
As long as we weren't all blown up,
And we didn't
Join the mad capitalist
Frenzy to climb
That slippery greasy pole for
Status and money and ambition,
And carried on believing
That we could tear down our own little wall
And continue to be a part of it all -
But
We most of us sold out,
Or compromised and
Went into teaching,
And the World did not change;
In fact got worse,
Even though
Melanie and Dylan and John Lennon
Carried on singing,
Kept the flag flying high,
Kept the banners fluttering
In the wind blowing down
Distorted streets
Until the Thatcherite police
Batoned and tasered
Their way through the picket lines
And the cause was lost.

Now these old songs
Wake me up again,
Restore my hope against hope,
Inspire me to write
Mournful poems of
What might have been,
Even though the World,
Like the Run Away Train,
Is careering down the line
Her whistle wide and her throttle back
And blowing, blowing, blowing.