Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler

Eventually, the searing scandal

Settled into stale history,

Like a sediment in the public mind.

The powerful men the teen bedded—

In vivid tabloid editions,

Like hours of pillow-talk

In the lurid political limelight—

Have exited in their mortal flesh,

A final form of nakedness.

A government fell, a suicide imbibed,

And Ivanov, recalled, evaporated

In the Gulag’s lethal oblivion.

Everything is tell-all, now.

Who mourns corrupted innocence?

Her keen beauty has eroded,

The sheening anthracite hair a null grey—

The ravages of notoriety,

Acidulous gossip, the weight of time—

Though the racy photographs

Are deemed works of high art

By the usual high-placed critics.

She is now an obscure footnote

In a low-key Council flat.

What images well in her sleepscape?

Who is there now to think of her kindly?

Rod Moran