Jake1

FRANKS CASKET

from The Remedy

What else is there to do? Night comes down,
midges and moths batter the telephone-box.
In its acid light we wait for the crossed
wire that puts a call through here. The end of the line.
Mrs Smith wants to speak to Mr Brown -
and the one who got to the receiver first
replies. How many miles might their voice
carry us? - under the dreary fields, where a stone's
of such earth-shattering significance
to the plough, beyond the byres and farms,
halls of slouched Wellingtons, tractors
on their haunches, hill-top pubs, the old men
spitting in the embers of fires that will burn
in the same place tomorrow, certain
of their seat - through the custodial rain,
the weather on its disruptive, day-breaking shifts,
to ports where the sea spreads its escape route
over and over the sand, to the cities
where the wind has a strip torn off it
and the interminable stars are shouted down.
I'm sorry Mrs Smith, Mr Brown is unable
to take your call. The phone's hung in its cradle:
insects fill the telephone-box, like dialling tones
shaken from the black earpiece.

The dead might speak, but they're ignored,
as if mouthing behind sound-proof glass.
We often think they're watching us
disgusted, but who do they report to?
They have the night at their backs,
no vast repository of small disgraces,
no hard disk or black box
full of stars marking the places
we were spectacular disappointments
to them. The dead were as bad as us,
if they begrudge us anything
it's weakness -
a body to be embarrassed by,
the living's lack of privacy.

(These are two extracts from a long poem commissioned by Lancaster Litfest 2001. See www.litfest.org)

comfort

Still, the new couch, wrapped in plastic,
sits outside the showroom,
the rain continues to come down
the green staircase of the inside
of each tree, though the sun's
baking the glaze off tiles and paving stones,
and in the black paint on the back door
the cracks appear, red raw.

Back to Index of Poets