Sketches

 

(i)

 

The train pulls into the station

Dragging in smells of office hours

And open its doors at six exact.

Leather pens, refilled all correct

Confident on the metal steps,

Move tracing the well worn paper rune

Taking a copy of their day

Onto the last company sheet.

But, now, a sudden shower

Has them wrap unfinished reports

About their thin redundant suits

And their faces are lost, dark flowers

In the evening sprouting

From their empty button holes.

 

 

(ii)

Wrapped in the news of yesterdays

The shadows wake in the alleyways

To fight the hierarchy of cats

And feed on cast-out scraps,

The heavy smells from restaurants,

From family stoves and bar-room grills

Drifting on the undiscerning nose

Unconscious that a day has passed,

Unaware of the hours kept

By the planet’s inner flame

Now blazing from a thousand hollow lamps.

 

(iii)

Into the empty stadia,

The desolation of her bed

Where once a hundred suitors lay,

Planted their distinctive flowers

And now blooms just an iron grey

Stiff with the cynics’ chlorophyll,

Coal dust lining its tired eyes,

Its ribs, ribs that named the seasons

Moulded now in unchanging steel,

There comes a moon through the gates

Carried in a shower of gold

And for a moment is revealed

The passage of a throwing hand,

A vision she can barely grasp

Before the arc lights prove it false

And introduce another novel play.

 

(iv)

Clothes drying upon a loose line

Strung from a black maid’s lips

To her lady’s languid hips;

This much can be seen in any scene

In any gallery’s walls

And the eye can ridicule

The untragic tragedy

But the sense that can join the eye

To the painter’s last resort where

The truth has meaning in itself

Lies in the common brush’s lie.

 

Place a mirror in your handbag now;

The world is to be found

In our fatigued expressions.