It might be a long, long time since I was christened Christopher
And nicknamed Kit… but not so long ago
As 1570, when was born my namesake,
Who did his best to stage the Fireworks Show
That nearly happened. Yet they blew their chance
And came to grief, as which of us wouldn’t have done?
Myself, I’d have been particularly useless,
Managing of the manoeuvres only one:
Cloaked and daggered, meeting my co-conspirators
For a conspiratorial drink in the Duck and Drake
Off Fleet Street. I’d have been first man at the bar.
That part of the Plot I’d have found a piece of cake.
But nothing involving mental or physical courage,
Enduring the third degree, to the slightest degree.
There again, sociopathic terrorism
On such a scale might not have appealed to me,
I hope. But once you were in you were stuck with the Just
And Glorious Enterprise – no turning back
For Catesby, Wintour, Percy, Fawkes and of course,
The indispensable Wright Brothers, Kit and Jack.
The following day, they rode like hell through the rain
To get to the Staffordshire safe house, where the entire
Project collapsed through yet more gunpowder ordnance –
Which colleagues decided to dry out by the fire.
Inexplicably, it exploded. Damaged
Beyond repair, they staggered out to be shot
By the Sheriff of Worcester’s posse, as in a western.
And so Kit Wright was released from the Gunpowder Plot.
They were martial Catholics, soldiers of Spain, Yorkshiremen,
And apart from other bondings, brothers-in-law.
They were persecuted and they had been betrayed
And terrors rained down on the innocent as before.
