|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because my Polish doesn’t run to ‘tram ticket’, I have to walk. And my camera’s jammed. I jab it with my gloves. Brush at orange grit the wind flings off the tarmac. It’s miles. And anyway, the light’s gone.
Over the bridge, across the Vistula, is Praga – the Bear Pit, the badlands, the concrete tower blocks. The sky weighs down on the river, beats it flat, squeezing out the scum that snags on reeds. I imagine heavy industries upstream.
But it isn’t scum. Ice. Its visible edge. Because, down on the river, far from shore, two men crouch on camp-stools, hauling something in from the tricky gleam, doing intricate, delicate things with their bare hands.
I watch them. They’re quite at home out there in the channel. Smoking, fixing bait. The wind flicks Polish at me. It’s all beyond me – their Sunday morning ease, their ice, the fluent fish at large below their feet.
in collection, The Men from Praga, 2009, Salt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-8447142-2-3; first prize Blackwells/TLS competition 2000
The A1 near Alconbury Weston, heading north
after the choke of the A14 – half of busy Europe tramping from Felixstowe to Birmingham in the wake of the slowest frigorifique’s exhaust –
now you’re gulping miles so pure, so vast and empty your car’s a Maserati.
And long before Sawtry, in a sweet draught of flowering beans, the verges white with ox-eyed daisies, you’re swallowing the whole Nene Valley: church spires, floodplain, light industrial;
your roof and road wide open, the sky’s constant blue music all that’s keeping pace with you.
in collection, The Men from Praga, 2009, Salt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-8447142-2-3; first published in Oxford Poetry Volume XI: Number 3: Winter 2003
He's on his second cup, and does it again: tears carefully apart with both hands, little finger flicking the shooshing cascade. He stares as if his whole life centred on this ritual of sugaring, stirs it into circles that draw him down and down.
While he's drinking his coffee, he will think of his wife's habit of clearing her throat before speaking, that little huh-huh he wants to stop, but it's been too long now – he's hardly aware of when it started, it was suddenly always there announcing the least mention of dinner, of rain.
He has another packet of sugar, turning and tapping it, forefinger and thumb turning and tapping.
And it's been so long, he can hardly mention it now, and even if he did, she wouldn't be able to stop, so why make two of them unhappy?
Turning and tapping the unopened sachet of brown sugar on the yellow formica.
But perhaps he should say something now so she knows to get out of his way one day when it will become unbearable, as it nearly has. And he reaches for the slopped cup's thick white handle.
To get some air, if there were any air, Mr McLurcan brought the parrot up on deck. Its cage, wrought & gilded like the Koh-i- Noor’s at the Crystal Palace, wobbled & squawked. The parrot swung by his beak from the bars: I saw it peer out through one crazy eye, desperate for leaves, jackfruit, a tender from port. When he opened the door, it seemed to pour out, up in a flash, the arc of a maroon to the rigging, where it blustered from spar to spar like St Elmo’s fire. Everyone stared & shouted. There was all the sea, level as a field of wheat between here & Ascension for it to get lost in, but it sneered, & chewed a claw with its pewter tongue & then hunted through all the bare forest of our ship for leaves, nuts, berries, another parrot, or any trace of any green thing. There was only the mustard & cress I had sown sprouting down in the dark of our cabin. Mr McLurcan turned back to his carving. He’ll be down, soon enough, when he’s hungry. Wind in night. 40 days out of Melbourne. Black albatross raffled for the Seaman’s Mission.
|
|
©
of
all poems featured on this site remains with the
poet |
