October
2006
Edinburgh at Night
Waste chutes like
plastic centipedes
hang as vines from floors
stripped of most their walls,
scaffolding creeps up like
ants subduing a spired
caterpillar, but this creature
is a husk of iron and bricks.
The guts are stripped out and
piled high in skips,
being prepared not for mummification
but a new infestation of
society.
It is an enema of
reconstruction, a menstrual
gestation that lasts a generation,
the lining and protective
chrysalis of a growth time being cast off.
And here we see fronds of flayed wallpaper
and it’s flesh bed of plaster,
mattresses still made up with sheets
and stacks of worn floorboards,
ready to be torn into a mulch
of memory and entropy,
never to be sifted or catalogued,
but to be removed elsewhere and evenly spread,
human silt.
I like how you compare the reconstruction of a building to natural processes in nature. The use of rhyme to illustrate these metaphors, such as “a menstrual / gestation that lasts a generation” make them particularly strong. However, the poem ends a bit too easily for me… these waste products from gutted buildings in truth won’t be “evenly spread / [like] human silt”, but instead pack into landfills. It might mess with the tone of the poem, but a more bitter twist at the end could tighten it up.