"Hats off to hatred" is a phrase you would normally hear at a prize-giving, and that is the trick KGBlack plays. An expression of admiration is aimed at the ugliest of targets, and for the first few lines the reader can't be sure whether to laugh or wince.
The opening stanza sounds like a parent at a school sports day. "You did it! / We're so proud!" contains the only exclamation marks in the poem, and they ring with a sugary, patronising brightness. Praise this lavish is a way of talking down: hatred is treated like a small child who has finally tied its own shoelaces. The mock-pride shrinks hatred while appearing to celebrate it. There is also a quiet piece of wordplay, because the word "hatred" has a "hat" sitting inside it, so the phrase seems to salute itself.
The second stanza sharpens the argument: "You became a reason, / An excuse, / A job." Read slowly, it is a list of demotions. A "reason" at least pretends to be respectable. An "excuse" admits the reason was a cover story. A "job" is what is left when passion has drained away and only routine remains. The lines shrink as they go, from six syllables to three to two, so the sentence dwindles along with the thing it describes. The poem never says whose job this is or what is being excused, and that restraint helps. Hatred here is less a roaring fire than something people hide behind and clock in to.
Then comes the return of the opening line, now introduced by "So," as if a conclusion had been reached. The voice has changed, though. The exclamation marks are gone, and the speaker makes flat, steady statements: "You won't ruin us." Then the hinge: "No..." The ellipsis is the poem's only hesitation, a breath in which the expected sentence is turned around. We expect the speaker to keep denying the damage. Instead we get "You will rebuild us."
That final stanza is also the only one with four lines. The extra line is the pivot itself, as though the poem's pattern of threes had to stretch to make room for the reversal. "Ruin" and "rebuild" start with the same sound but point in opposite directions, so the second word undoes the first. If the hats make you think of hard hats, which is my own reading rather than anything the poem states, hatred becomes a clumsy building contractor who knocks things down and ends up doing the construction work. "Rebuild" is an honest word, since it admits that something was knocked down. The poem does not pretend nothing was hurt.
There is no end rhyme and no regular metre. The lines are short and close to speech, and repetition does the work that rhyme usually does. "Hats off to hatred" returns like a refrain, and "us" lands twice in the last stanza, the "we" of the first stanza now sharpened into a group that has been targeted and will survive. The poem gives no context for who that group is, which leaves the pronoun open for any reader who has faced hatred.
The poem matters because it turns down two easy responses, pleading and pure rage. Sarcasm is its weapon at the start, but by the end the sarcasm has become something nearer to resolve. The toast is ironic and also strangely sincere, since hatred is credited with the one outcome it never intended. The poem does not say what we will be rebuilt into. Stronger, different and closer together are all possible, and it trusts the reader to choose. That open ending gives a very small poem its force.