My Appreciation of Nicolai Gogol

One of the plays I will always admire is
'A Government Inspector' by Nocolai Gogol,
for how much it scripts the vanity, delusion,
and sheer pettiness of life in a nuclear family
in the smal town I grew up in, in Midlands England.

There we had not the humour to realise
when we were being played for a joke
when how we lived became the punchline.

The locals took at face value each announcement
of some bright new future that was never to arrive
until the next announcement of the next future
that never arrived, and the promised future after that.
Until, when the announcements were added together
nobody knowing from which point in the past
they should have started to feel the dissapointment.

I started to feel better about the present
soon after I left the town, though
it took me many years to work out why,
not realising how limited the future
that I imagined for myself was going to be.

Now when I hear a politicianl say
'We need to listen to the communities',
I wryly smile at the prospect, and wonder
when meeting what my communty could ask them
that they and their minders are capable of delivering......