The Official Secrets Act
Sub-Section 1, Paragraph 2; Amended 02/2008
Feb 19 2008


In 50 years
the archives will be de-classified.

Researchers in white cotton gloves
will blow the dust off,
and scrape open sticky drawers.
Bibliographers and gossip-mongers
will crowd through sealed doors,
and reporters jostle for the front row.
Old files, brittle and yellowing
will be gently unfolded,
and vintage computers fired-up and decoded.
. . . And in 50 years,
all my shameful secrets made known.

In 50 years
I’ll be over a hundred,
or I’ll be dead
-- and I suspect long-lost lovers will no longer care.
Even the taxman will look-on with a sigh,
the statute of limitations having long since expired.
And my fellow poets, who have yet to die
will be too senile to bother,
with my snide asides
and pathetic lies
and petty envy.
And the many breathless intimacies
and urgent whisperings
of a long debauched life,
will seem merely childish.

Because the passage of time
is a great charity,
rendering old secrets powerless.
And in 50 years, I’ll be no more than a harmless curiosity;
a confused old codger,
mumbling about cover-ups
and spreading mischievous rumours.