News

When he returned from the war

He began to
horde

Copies of The Times.

Slouched in his
Chesterfield

Or oftentimes

At the
breakfast, lunch or dinner table

He would read from
front to back

Carefully fold the day's
news

Then add it to the pile.

It
was an archive

He said

On the
advent of the transistor

And
again

Three years later

When
Churchill ousted Attlee.

His wife
sighed

And tried to dust
around

George VI laying in
state

And the three million Korean
bodies

Littering the thirty-eighth
parallel.

By the time Floyd
Patterson

Floored Archie Moore in Round
Five

Newspaper tower blocks

Were
rising throughout the sitting room.

We've no room for
a wireless

He said

Besides, I've
all the news I want

Right
here

Brandishing the silver
tureen

Of Sputnik One.

He would
not

could not

Part with
them

Nuzzling deeper into drifts of cream and
grey

Transforming the room into his counting
house.

-

Nor
til

Charlie Heston raised

His Oscar
for Ben-Hur

Did the idea spark.

It came to
her

Sat on a wet bench in the
park

Picking chips and battered
cod

From a crumpled tulip of
newsprint

A way

To staunch the
swampy flow

To prune his
archive

Before it spread to the
hall

And started jostling for
space

With the
hat-stand.

-

She began
subtly

Shredding Arnold Palmer

And
his US Open triumph

Into thin
strips

Before stirring him into the sausage
casserole.

She watched

Her husband
chomp and slobber

Gravy dripping from his
fork

Denials playing round the inside of her
mouth

Like boiled sweets.

It grew
easier.

He gnashed through the Bay of
Pigs

Mummified in a strudel

Lunched
oblivious on fish paste and

A Sino-Mongolian border
treaty.

By the Alaskan earthquake of
'64

Every meal she fed him

Was
thick with history.

His teeth
crushed

Strikes, ground down gristy
oppressors.

One evening, queasy from an ear
infection

Caught at the pool

He
pushed the Tet Offensive aside

Unfinished and
swimming in ketchup.

-

He read of
Thatcher's entrance

With an
eyeglass

Blinking through the dark
streaks

Of cataracts. His hand shook
-

Ballot box stats obscure

As if
viewed through a frosted pane.

Damn that
woman

He told the
room.

-

She returns from her walk
to find

Him slumped in his
armchair

Eyeglass
smashed

Surrounded by a lifetime's
work

Today's paper spread in his
lap.

I want to make space

He
says

For a transistor
radio.

Good

She
says

And smiles

Though she is a
little out of breath

I'll cook you something
special

To celebrate.