Poem 147
An old man in his last hours realises he’s not going to make it all the way out of winter into proper spring – this time the seasons aren’t going to turn for him, he’s going to die on the borderline in no man’s land … another from the lounge of Hohiria Rd 1982 correlating evening and death, the hour I’ve thought most likely I will die at when it’s my turn … some say it’s always darkest before the dawn but for me there’s no dark like that between 6 and 8pm …
… there’s an element of Tennyson’s In Memoriam here, and T.S. Eliot’s April (spring) being the cruellest phase of the year …
( I like how I’ve used (breech) birth imagery for death, the subtle build up of rhyme, and that in a sense the poem has a happy ending as out of the darkness he’s revisited by a vibrant light-filled flashback of himself as a child … it’s not often you get to use the juicy word jubilant … )
No Man’s Land
Dirty unloved street sinking back in the spring's cold slap dark like gas coming over the lines shingle holes broken bones of stone snap through the ground someone will die here now in the sludgy dusk disappointed not knowing how to turn the miscarrying spring caught forever beyond his reach he lies wedged tight in the strangling winter's breech and against the purse of night within like coins the memories come years fingered off shiny thin rims all as one there is the boy in the fountain wading round and round singing loud a song new and jubilant on his tongue each foot kicking up showers like sparks high in the sun