(no subject)
Still working regularly on Burner; might as well throw in a couple more...
We Want A Name
In a Somerset town
the cop shouted it:
-- Hey! Stop a moment!
You there -
Blackie!
Black fella!
Black Mike took issue
with what you might call
the racial remark --
in I'd say fifteen seconds
one cop's on his back
and we're blocking the other,
giving Mike a start.
Of course they came to site
(Black Mike long gone),
poked round our vehicles;
shouted to us:
You know why we're here!
Just give us a name!
We want his name!
On the sixth day, Jack
climbs out of his truck
as a copper shouts it:
We want his name!
Jack's had enough.
He says Look, lads, I thought
you already knew it:
'Black Fella'.
Copper starts for him;
halfway there
sees the size of him,
the look on his face.
Jack says Think you'd best
just take that name back
to the Chief of Police.
You'd best let him know
you're still looking for Black Fella.
Never been nobody
here by that name.
The Knife Thrower
The telly in the dayroom was on but still when I listened
I swear I could hear their skin sinking and wrinkling,
their cells unravelling, their hearts struggling and fluttering --
This one, he must have been over ninety,
his head a heavy little bald pebble;
he hunched in the corner in his wheelchair
his eye mad and sulky,
scowling, trying to settle
whether it was just illusion, his mind playing tricks,
or if he had really been something greater and brighter, once,
than this forked demented dying scrap.
A nurse brought him in a meal on a plastic tray
and stayed a few extra minutes; you could see she liked him.
As she got up to leave she put a box in front of him:
a plastic box full of little soft felted balls.
I watched as he picked one up - as he paused - as he launched it --
As it bounced off the far wall, his face almost cleared
like a Yorkshire sky in winter -
an instant's light --
I caught up with the nurse in the corridor: she told me
he had once thrown knives in a circus,
but all he remembered now of caravans and punters,
of tents and marquees and co-incidences and rust,
of strong drink and women in spangles and his old patter
of the tight-drawn air -- then applause that had lifted the hairs
on the back of his own neck --
all he remembered
was the throwing itself:
the motion.
He knew he had once thrown something; he knew it had seemed
to mean the world, but he couldn't recall what or why…
Still, the only way
the nurse had found to ease these days,
to lighten his time as he waited to see whether death
would bring him to meaning or peace or nothing at all -
the only thing that could almost smooth
his challenging, cheated scowl --
was to find him something to throw
and let him throw it.
We Want A Name
In a Somerset town
the cop shouted it:
-- Hey! Stop a moment!
You there -
Blackie!
Black fella!
Black Mike took issue
with what you might call
the racial remark --
in I'd say fifteen seconds
one cop's on his back
and we're blocking the other,
giving Mike a start.
Of course they came to site
(Black Mike long gone),
poked round our vehicles;
shouted to us:
You know why we're here!
Just give us a name!
We want his name!
On the sixth day, Jack
climbs out of his truck
as a copper shouts it:
We want his name!
Jack's had enough.
He says Look, lads, I thought
you already knew it:
'Black Fella'.
Copper starts for him;
halfway there
sees the size of him,
the look on his face.
Jack says Think you'd best
just take that name back
to the Chief of Police.
You'd best let him know
you're still looking for Black Fella.
Never been nobody
here by that name.
The Knife Thrower
The telly in the dayroom was on but still when I listened
I swear I could hear their skin sinking and wrinkling,
their cells unravelling, their hearts struggling and fluttering --
This one, he must have been over ninety,
his head a heavy little bald pebble;
he hunched in the corner in his wheelchair
his eye mad and sulky,
scowling, trying to settle
whether it was just illusion, his mind playing tricks,
or if he had really been something greater and brighter, once,
than this forked demented dying scrap.
A nurse brought him in a meal on a plastic tray
and stayed a few extra minutes; you could see she liked him.
As she got up to leave she put a box in front of him:
a plastic box full of little soft felted balls.
I watched as he picked one up - as he paused - as he launched it --
As it bounced off the far wall, his face almost cleared
like a Yorkshire sky in winter -
an instant's light --
I caught up with the nurse in the corridor: she told me
he had once thrown knives in a circus,
but all he remembered now of caravans and punters,
of tents and marquees and co-incidences and rust,
of strong drink and women in spangles and his old patter
of the tight-drawn air -- then applause that had lifted the hairs
on the back of his own neck --
all he remembered
was the throwing itself:
the motion.
He knew he had once thrown something; he knew it had seemed
to mean the world, but he couldn't recall what or why…
Still, the only way
the nurse had found to ease these days,
to lighten his time as he waited to see whether death
would bring him to meaning or peace or nothing at all -
the only thing that could almost smooth
his challenging, cheated scowl --
was to find him something to throw
and let him throw it.