Roibeard Mhuiris retweetledi
The Hour of the Missing Definition
The studio lights are dimmed and low,
A shadow of the show we know.
Where Jenni Murray once held the line,
Clear in thought and sharp in spine.
She knew the ground on which she stood,
No need to blur what’s understood.
No hedged reply, no careful spin -
She said what words were anchored in.
Now Nuala leads and Anita agrees,
As plain words drift on careful seas.
They circle themes, avoid the core,
And never quite define the door.
The Hour remains, the Woman’s gone,
Rewritten quietly, then moved on.
Swapped for language soft and wide,
Where nothing firm can quite reside.
It’s hard to steer a flagship show
When basic terms you will not know.
To claim the ground of women’s rights,
Then spend the hour on borrowed sights.
The audience drifts, the patience thins,
They sense the game, they see the spins.
A fog of words, a careful dance,
An endless hedge, a studied glance.
If “woman” now’s a shifting claim,
A feeling dressed up as a name,
Then drop the title, end the act -
A show untethered from its fact.
Then end it now, draw down the blind,
No need to dress it up as kind.
In that last hush, beneath the beat,
You hear a legend’s slow retreat.
English
