Poem 400

This can be read as a sort of antidote to Poem 389 – whereas Wednesday lunchtime in that poem is a sour trap of an affair, across town a Thursday arrangement stretches out into a lambent parable of love cradling loss sacrifice and tenderness … ‘sadly beautiful’ as a favourite song of mine terms it …

… as in Poem 395 – photosynthesis and respiration also from sixth form biology …

Endless Thursday Afternoon

There was an empty room
a couple kept to make love in
one said I feel guilty
          and bought a palm
that stood alone in the room
and watched them
          thinking they were its parents
          bringing caresses back to the nest
once a week

a burglar broke in
enraged at having cut himself on the glass
         and finding nothing
he throttled the palm
                                           breaking its back
smearing blood on the broad leaves

when the couple saw they began to argue
one said they couldn't make love
         in front of the dying plant fractured
         and yellowing
the other said that was exactly
        what it would want
so they did and the palm with its last
         dying photosynthetic
         respiration
dragged itself to the window and threw
their clothes out

                                  stained with blood
from the leaves the clothes
floated into a field
and people conjectured
the lovers had torn each other to ribbons
        that flocks of birds had eaten
leaving no trace

but they were still there in the room
with no clothes to come out in
          having lost all their snapshots
quickly they forgot most things
         growing old
they would hold hands
and say remember our palm
our baby that died
and move their skin together
saying feel
                       the leaves