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While I no longer write poetry, this is perhaps my first 'serious' poem, inspired by my encounters with my teenage West German peers in the late 1970s.

They are the new class, a willing
Proletariat, articulate and nearly sad.
They gnaw the world and condemn it
With vigorous spittle. They stare and
The flames of their revolutions flicker
In lucid blue. They fear something,
Perhaps death; their parents are dead,
Embalmed in guilt. In protest they
Shuffle and scuffle in polite violence;
Then drift home in dreamy pairs,
Sober and alleviated.

At weekends they drink, nervous,
In brown austere bars, revering
Their polished gods Marx and Dylan.
I have seen them, in Cologne and Bonn,
Take long breezy walks parallel
To the Rhine and gaze at barges
Cleaving and discarding greyness.

In England sometimes we call them
'Bloody doormats for the Russians!'