Still young to look at
And yet
My sight has seen, and is blotchy with the stamp of a hundred suns.
My ears will keep ringing like ignored alarms,
My gums hitch themselves up around my teeth and wade through sugary seas.
Even my toes won’t bed into sand like they used to;
One of them annoyingly seems splinted by its own cartilage.
All these accolades accompany me to my next engagement,
They sit as cargo in my reflection of a grubby train window.
Incidentals:
Just outside Shrewsbury trackside foliage rises up and smothers carriage
for several miles. No-one reacts.
Between Shrewsbury and Wellington, crippled builder tells me: it’s all very well
having computers but we’ll always need places to house them.
Nowhere near Telford and sky takes on pearlescent quality, fields have yellow
tinge, earth probably quite dry.
Birmingham: much track lights up, also, light picks out row of poplars in v.
strong green in front of patchwork fence, and lewdly imposing bank of black cloud.
The second hand of a station clock set to music ...
Incidentally the engagement:
Still young to look at
And although there is no trust left between us,
You looked upon my bare arms
And the veins that dance down to my palms
As we sat in the back of your little black car,
And the wettest rain slid silently past.
