Sweepings

Here is the wholesome, wholegrain bobby-soxer,
Beaten into drowning by the cold-war.
She’s all flat calves and airline teeth,
A dental aerial of plastic decades,
Fins and tail pipes stretching into distance.

The rhythm soaks in us,
Beyond the drowned
With their black ends

Here the phoney, new stuff,
This panelling like mirrors,
Takes light and makes it brown,
Warm glows of ersatz history,
Steamed to tell of rain outside,
A storm which lights the walls.

Here is the body of a salt-drugged,
Sleeping shellfish man,
Downshifted long ago,
Dreaming of his crab lines,
Orange, tight into the sea,
To fight the rip
And live in three worlds

And my wife and children
With their ills and fears,
These anchors in the moor,
The cables strained against
The mile-high metal tower.

They are all broken by machine
And numbers over everything,
Making constants always beautiful.

I smell my school,
The sweet polish
And the woodblock,
Hear music in a distant laugh.
And know this day’s troubles
end with the day.