NECROMANCING THE TRILBY

They’re still missing.

Vamoosed from churches, proclamations and espionage.

In absentia from wardrobes and our mind-sets.

There have been ruminations, rumblings and rumours about the return of the hat.
Let’s hold a seancé for berets, boaters, bonnets and busbys,

Call back to action the cloche, coronets and cowboys,

Revisit the derby, dupatta and deerstalker,

Necromance fine fedoras and flat caps.
Those essential flaps that guarded the ideas of our forefathers as ideologies zipped around brains.

A century has past and diamond hatpins rust in hidden cigar cases,

Necessity does mother our chapeaux-wearing when sleet blows sideways,

But rebels would not leave the house without this final string in their bow.

Now we walk around unfinished, with nowhere really to go.

Cover our tresses with garlands, homburgs and panamas,

Deck ourselves out with pillboxes, skullcaps and sombreros,

Let’s lift the trilby, turban and veil back to the collective fashion unconscious.

Sure, fillies flying the flag for fascinators, or woollen hats in the winter

How well do secrets keep under a bobbled hat?

Poor millinery was not the reason Graham Greene ended the affair.

Who will wear a fez now Tommy Cooper is dead?