Felix Dennis

What fell thoughts swim in a copper’s head
When he leans on a midnight bell
Rehearsing words all parents dread
From a speech he knows too well?
	Here’s dirty work, my beauty;
	Make sure your prayers are said
	For them as do their duty –
	While you lie snug a-bed.
Where dwells the will midst smoke and fire
As the buckling hoses spout
To clamber up just one floor higher
While his radio shrieks GET OUT!
	Here’s dirty work, my beauty;
	Make sure your prayers are said
	For them as do their duty –
	While you lie snug a-bed.
How come Ms. Parks by a soft spoke ‘No’,
Sat quiet on a downtown bus,
To pluck the feathers off Jim Crow
And to shame the likes of us?
	Here’s dirty work, my beauty;
	Make sure your prayers are said
	For them as do their duty –
	While you lie snug a-bed.
Who stops to close the eyes of the dead
When none but his own God sees?
Who stays behind when hope has fled,
In the camps of the refugees?
	Here’s dirty work, my beauty;
	Make sure your prayers are said
	For them as do their duty –
	While you lie snug a-bed.

Dorsington, Warwickshire April 21, 2002