November
2006
Dusk
School is back with its uniformed rabble,
Cursing and barging like Wellington’s scum
Brought up on drink. Mushrooms spring up
From squelching mud in rings. Shouts and hollering
Swell forth over crisp playing fields and push out the
Soft sound of bat and ball
Like a new birth.
The chink of glasses and laughter
Has a different look to it in the purple screen
Of evening. Television screens flicker from
Flat windows like insincere smiles.
Lights in hallways beckon me
Into other rooms. Smells of food
Are more pertinent than in the sun
And this island of night
Has wrapped itself in its cloaks and lies
In a bed of hide-rugs like Odysseus
Spewed out by the sea and bathed in oil,
Its wily cast of thousands inching their way forward
Like the newly blind. Deaf to the polluted snorts and coughs
Of disjointed trundling trucks, fornicating mothers
Play their games of disappointment in their 4 x 4s.
You were the brightness of my days
Like a galaxy exploding inside me.