The Fool's Last Words

 

The Fool’s Last Words

Unable to pay the bills to keep warm,

A cold old lady sat in a bus seat,

Gazing outside at the wintery storm,

As fellow-passengers gave off free heat.

Sitting nearby, a fool, of middle-age,

Relished the warmth, being broke and cold too;

He perused The Mail, and thought it was sage,

For he was of a Conservative hue.

Indeed, he was using the bus this day,

To go to the polling station, where he

Intended to vote his usual way,

Not knowing he needed photo ID,

Of which he had sadly nothing at all

To show that day at the local church hall.

And so the fool, thus unable to vote,

Sat on the bus home staring at the rain;

He, having just spent his very last note,

Felt frozen, weary and hungry again.

Redundancy pay was fast running out,

Jobseekers allowance; blood from a stone,

And, there being nobody else about,

But the cold old lady, tired and alone,

Who daily travels on the bus for free,

He told her his tale, attributing blame

To snowflake lefties; who else could it be?

He raged till the bus to his rented flat came;

“And I’ll go to bed at noon”, so he said,

And he died there, bitter, cold and unfed.