----------------
A ghost in life is passing by
Ignored in presence like a sigh.
Drag-footed, dusty, freight with years,
Sag-skinned, fog-eyed, with clothes in smears,
I shambled pavements frosted grey
One February freezing day
As mothers with their bawling young
Raced buggies with their shopping hung,
Anxious to reach the warmth of home
And wipe those faces’ grime and rheum.
To those young women, task-befraught,
I was an eye-edge, old-clothed nought,
Of no concern to dashing, feeding,
Early playgroups, early reading;
Street clutter that as well might be
The bare trunk of a winter tree.
Of parenthood, the joys, the sorrow,
Have sidestepped me like last year’s morrow:
The very children, buggy-couched,
In blankets, hats and mittens pouched,
Dismissed me with a through-see eye
Like chub-faced satraps sweeping by.
Just one or two their self-love ceased,
Their mewling paused, their fat eyes creased,
Struck by my one substantial note,
A bulbous beard from lip to throat
Billowing white like old Saint Nick’s,
Which summoned up a few faint flicks
Of memory that recently,
So parents said, one such as I
Had slithered roofs and ice-hard drifts
To creep through rooms and bring forth gifts.
But on the instant, eye-light dulled
And Buddha-like uninterest nulled
The quick glance between them and I;
Their buggies sped past on the fly
As mothers rushed, and naught was left
But waning backs: it felt like theft.
Alone, I slow-stepped on my walk
Like one bemused by self-butt talk,
A drab inconsequence to those
Aswirl in the world’s work which knows
Only of breeding, rearing, getting,
Family struggles and more indebting.
What’s left, when old, but empty rooms,
Chilly, shabby and mute as tombs,
And luncheon clubs and coffee meets
With mumbled cake and half-sucked sweets,
Where knife-tongued ladies, close in groups,
Trade gossip, outrage, harsh-judged scoops,
And quivered dewlaps, tut-thrown busts
Disdain the young, their zests, their lusts?
The few men present, yellow-ill,
Sit neutered in their chairs and still.
The ladies’ hair styles, blue-tint white,
Straggle their skulls like twine spun tight,
And show the perished scalp below,
Blanched lifeless like the earth in snow.
In side street gardens, propped at walls,
Bony hydrangeas with their gnarls
Of dead brown-brittle flower heads
Are rattled in a breeze which treads
The streets, flinging an icy scythe
And of swelled leaf-buds taking tithe.
Beyond the city bounds the fields
Are black upon the sodden wealds
And pocked by stubble, winter-dull,
Picked at by starving rook and gull:
There’s many a bird who at their roost
By morning will by death be noosed.
In town, I paused my High Street prowl
Like some gaunt monk beneath his cowl,
And cast an unillusioned stare
At all the human wear and tear
Which in a tidal flow pressed round
My flotsam carcass gone aground –
A rotted log athwart the stream,
Flurrying its impatient teem.
Become a nuisance and a block
I sidestepped all that push and knock,
Turning into a mews from which
No exit beckoned to that itch
Of life except the path I’d come,
But old men in their years gone numb
Do not, tout court, restep their way:
And so, stark-chilled this frost-bound day,
A shadow in the browning light,
I limped on and was lost to sight.
====================
© February 2015 (first part) - February 2016 (second part)
And Buddha-like uninterest nulled
The quick glance between them and I;
Their buggies sped past on the fly
As mothers rushed, and naught was left
But waning backs: it felt like theft.
Alone, I slow-stepped on my walk
Like one bemused by self-butt talk,
A drab inconsequence to those
Aswirl in the world’s work which knows
Only of breeding, rearing, getting,
Family struggles and more indebting.
What’s left, when old, but empty rooms,
Chilly, shabby and mute as tombs,
And luncheon clubs and coffee meets
With mumbled cake and half-sucked sweets,
Where knife-tongued ladies, close in groups,
Trade gossip, outrage, harsh-judged scoops,
And quivered dewlaps, tut-thrown busts
Disdain the young, their zests, their lusts?
The few men present, yellow-ill,
Sit neutered in their chairs and still.
The ladies’ hair styles, blue-tint white,
Straggle their skulls like twine spun tight,
And show the perished scalp below,
Blanched lifeless like the earth in snow.
In side street gardens, propped at walls,
Bony hydrangeas with their gnarls
Of dead brown-brittle flower heads
Are rattled in a breeze which treads
The streets, flinging an icy scythe
And of swelled leaf-buds taking tithe.
Beyond the city bounds the fields
Are black upon the sodden wealds
And pocked by stubble, winter-dull,
Picked at by starving rook and gull:
There’s many a bird who at their roost
By morning will by death be noosed.
In town, I paused my High Street prowl
Like some gaunt monk beneath his cowl,
And cast an unillusioned stare
At all the human wear and tear
Which in a tidal flow pressed round
My flotsam carcass gone aground –
A rotted log athwart the stream,
Flurrying its impatient teem.
Become a nuisance and a block
I sidestepped all that push and knock,
Turning into a mews from which
No exit beckoned to that itch
Of life except the path I’d come,
But old men in their years gone numb
Do not, tout court, restep their way:
And so, stark-chilled this frost-bound day,
A shadow in the browning light,
I limped on and was lost to sight.
====================
© February 2015 (first part) - February 2016 (second part)
