Uniform

See black, see yellow with little notebooks drawn,
See grey stripes bowling down the street.
Silver streaks and T-shirts so precisely torn,
Strange foreign chaps in white bed-sheets:
Uniforms.
See golden halo’d men of high renown,
prance to the politicians’ beat.
Well tailored in unswerving elegance
with shoes by Gucci on their feet:
Uniforms.

How do you know who the hell you are?
Wake up each day under a different star?
Dressed to the nines, meet yourself going home
like a clone, smartly dressed in your pressed uniform.
Uniforms.

White battle dress on green pitch, proud eleven
Beneath the swelling box so neat,
the teeming millions of the future fly,
the spinning cricket ball to cheat.
They’re all uniform.
Uniforms.