The Words in Me
title poem from The Words in Me
The Words in Me
i
On the cool May water
patient ducks do their duckly duty
and chilled out swans lurch
in almost imperceptible leaps.
One, a big one by the sound of its wings,
flies berserkly, its feet still in the water
behind the bushes,
where I lay with a girl in the long rushes.
A hard-nailed dog, paws stiff as death
chews a fluorescent tennis ball
and vaguely obeys the small man,
whose narrow dark eyes acknowledge,
but only out of duty.
The pond is not warm now.
Was it ever?
Even when the old works of
undulating metal disgorged its useless vigour.
This place is a place where times collide
and all roads cross.
My fathers, survivors though they were,
naturally,
thought they were here to stay,
thought they could walk on the water.
That pond, that cool May pond,
that clean green pond,
that home to dutiful ducks
and chilled out swans,
started with their sweat
and with their water.
The cross-ponds bridge, the tidy tarmac,
the grass, the dog shit, the drunken piss.
See – even now the waters come – even now
but with less pain.
An angry crow, helpless,
or it could be a rook,
anyway, it has a big yellow beak
and it craws loud and angry
at the new road and the thick-wheeled cycles
and the motorised wheelchair, and most of all
most of all, it shouts at the patient ducks.
ii
A dying pylon collapses, its corpse disintegrates.
The three parts of its giant insect body,
decomposing prey to the acetylene burners
and the maggot men with their big yellow jaws.
iii
A slow pad over the arc of the Pont d’Agen
to the tarmacked path, where the long rushes were
and a nervous coot, scoots, home to its dying mother.
iv
Like a lost turtle, out of place,
the ghost of my future is barely seen
by the thick meat frame and quick cold eyes
of men, protecting their brood,
with their stares.
I am alone, more akin to my dead father,
less at home than I was as a child,
even though then, I stole and lied
and cheated at cards,
when I could get away with it.
Without a dog, or a bike, or a young child,
or even a girlfriend,
I walk on purpose
even though I’m not going anywhere,
just crossing and looping
and thinking of then
and thinking of now
and thinking of then again,
as I avoid the cold sharp stares.
v
Polly the dog makes a nuisance of itself.
The little girl craws its name
like an angry black crow.
Her mother tugs, it’s time,
time, it’s always time to go.
vi
This is a moderate place
it hovers between then and now
between here and there
existing only because
of a random coming together
of the right sort of stuff
but it still hurts.
vii
Under the arc of the Pont d’Agen
cars flow; the scintillating heat
of their breath
settles on the new black road,
and she sighs,
and she hides
her secret methods.
But she knows,
and she will
recover.
viii
It’s time, and time again,
time to let the dreams
vaporise
and settle
and hide
in the black tarmac,
and wait
for a new reality.
