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.
