Although for much of his writing life Geoffrey Hill produced new poetry slowly (often a decade would pass between volumes), his work in the past fifteen years has come much faster and with a greater willingness to tackle contemporary events. "To the High Court of Parliament: November 1994", published by the TLS on November 18, 1994, was written in direct response to political events of the time. The Conservative government, under John Major, was beset by scandals and allegations of corruption which would eventually contribute to a landslide defeat in 1997 at the hands of Tony Blair's "New" Labour Party.

It is worth recalling the context in which Hill's poem was written. Back in the early 1990s, a political party which had been in power for more than a decade was losing its reputation for economic competence, and had ditched its charismatic if divisive leader in favour of a man who swiftly became a lame duck; the country had slid into recession, and house prices had collapsed; Britain had been involved in a war with Iraq; terrorists were setting off bombs in London; there were scandals involving MPs' expenses, and other forms of corruption; there was a controversial plan to privatize the Post Office.

In his book Canaan (1996) Hill published three poems with the title "To The High Court of Parliament"; this is the third of them, and the final poem in that collection. The first had dealt with the selling of peerages in exchange for political support ("the slither-frisk / to lordship of a kind / as rats to a bird-table") and the selling-off of public assets, including a graveyard for only £1 ("privatise to the dead / [England's] memory: / let her wounds weep / into the lens of oblivion"). But here Hill marshalls some of the artists who in previous centuries addressed, lampooned or criticized Parliament: Andrew Marvell, whose "poise" was equivocal but not equivocating, as he asserted the need for a balance of forces to maintain the integrity and independence of Cromwell's government; James Gillray, who satirized the corruption of the Crown and of politicians; and Milton, whose Areopagitica complained about press censorship.

The first lines are not, as they might first appear, a question: they are a qualifying phrase attached to the addressees of the title. The work of Marvell, Gillray and Milton, despite its integrity and power, is impotent against the "grandees risen from scavenge" and "masters of servile counsel" whom Hill excoriates. The second stanza, however, does end with a question: in the wake of the histories of tyranny and heroism, which Hill discusses throughout Canaan, and faced with the ruinous state of his nation in 1994, Hill asks who can now speak for the people, whose elected representatives have, so to speak, sold them down the river.

Hill's language and diction may seem archaic, grandiose, at odds with prevailing poetic trends, but he is consciously employing a language with enough weight, power and precision - enough gravitas and historical resonance - to do justice to its subject; to restore to the symbol of Parliament a proper significance; to remind readers of the hard-won, and carelessly lost, value of responsible national government.

The final vision of the Houses of Parliament, lamp-shaped and shadowy in twilight, designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, is one of beauty and menace. The quotation marks around "thy" imply the uncertainty over who holds, and who deserves, the title of sovereign authority; that "densely-reflective, long-drawn, procession of waters" is part of a troubling and unstable image of arrogant power and perpetual conflict.

To the High Court of Parliament:
November 1994

- who could outbalance poised
Marvell; balk the strength
of Gillray's unrelenting, unreconciling mind;
grandees risen from scavenge; to whom Milton
addressed his ideal censure:
once more, singular, ill-attended,
staid and bitter Commedia - as she is called -
delivers to your mirth her veiled presence.

None the less amazing: Barry's and Pugin's grand
dark-lantern above the incumbent Thames.
You: as by custom unillumined
masters of servile counsel.
Who can now speak for despoiled merit,
the fouled catchments of Demos,
as 'thy' high lamp presides with sovereign
equity, over against us, across this
densely-reflective, long-drawn, procession of waters?

GEOFFREY HILL (1994)

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "June 2nd, 1953" by Vita Sackville-West, click here.

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