Poem 402

The last poem I’ll take from folio 2, so written in 1983 when I was 23 … Blair Peach was a New Zealand teacher living in London in 1979 when he was bludgeoned to death by a police officer at an anti-National Front march … just recently his widow was in the news still looking for justice …

Blair Peach

I would never make a boot boy
I've always thought of my skull
as thin
brittle
host to these headaches
that nag on each day
like a dispute overheard
on the other side of a jerry-built wall

there must be a difference
between my head and theirs
they look all bone
as if an ache would be packed so tight
in there
it wouldn't have room to throb

when I want to knock a hole in
to let the pain out
what do they do
(that doctor I saw on tv
it's important to get in quickly
to relieve the pressure on the brain
and away he goes
with a brace and bit
strings of scalp curling up the shaft)

but heads like theirs
would surely shrug off the drill
defeat modern medicine

they're saying Blair Peach
had an abnormally thin skull
not surprising
he should die marching
against abnormally
thick ones