Moral compass, education, education, education and how to make of a kiss a dropped pound coin

There must be limits to what politics can do. These days, it's almost as if politics and politicians are the dialectic equivalent of Google, reserving the right to seep into everything. The Reith Lectures are currently addressing the issue. More can be found here. Meanwhile, this curious little gem of a poem published in today's Guardian reminds us better than we knew how to remind ourselves of what is going wrong in public life and how politics has become the mosquito-ridden waters of latterday narrative:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.