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| home> poets> Anne Stewart>more poems |
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| home> poets> Anne Stewart>more poems |
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What went on in the pooled light where coconuts thumbed their noses and goldfish hung in bags was all a game.
And just a game that dodging and weaving as the bent tin sparked and the tattooed man must have dropped your change.
The real stuff went on behind the canvas where mud gave way to grass and shapes too big for dogs shrunk from the light.
Rock’n’roll was barking in your ear like a sergeant-major when looking up you saw the flashing panel of names
Bob Beryl Bill Betty
But your pockets are empty and tomorrow they’ll be gone.
I’ll never forget him – one of my lads. He was a set-up : thought he was taking on someone with experience and went in hard. Soon eased off when he saw his opponent’s lack of guard. “Sorry sir. Are you all right ?” A shaking of hands.
Four years later he left for Ulster.
A shaking of hands. “Are you all right ?” “Sorry sir.” His opponent’s lack of guard soon eased off. When he saw and went in hard, someone with experience thought he was taking on a set-up. He was.
One of my lads… I’ll never forget him.
Why should they die, all those friends we hoped might live forever ? Who decides to sever their lines across the widening river ?
Where do they bear their swiftly-emptied haversack of hope ? Down what strange sunlit slope do their shadows dwindle and lose shape ?
When if again shall our smiles warm their time-whitened faces except in those places where ghosts linger, where our blood freezes ?
What remains that can testify they ever walked here, keep- sakes from the jumbled heap of nothings in which they fell asleep ?
These images: the phosphorescent flare of their spent days, their words, their random ways of loving, their momentary gaze.
No room in the hall so I kept it propped at the wall by the bay-window.
Not locked. Who would nick a scratched, black pre-war carrier-bike ?
Almost a penny-farthing with that small front-wheel, ideal for steering. . It weaved a treat through rush-hour buses, even with a hundred rushes of the day’s news.
But I never took a chance again with that slip-knotted string. Once was enough.
They mobbed and mocked like gulls, those City Final pages, as they dived under cars like scalded cocks.
I got most of them back, their Stop-Press with the 4 o’clock odds from Epsom franked by tyres or dog-muck.
The most obscene example of that gutter-press fell on the mat at 20 Carlton Crescent
where the light was never on and they left the cash with their next-door neighbour twice a month.
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