By Way of Conversation
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 12:54 am
By Way of Conversation
It’s like what you’d hear by way of conversation
in a bar listening to a stranger tell how he,
too young for such responsibility, brought home
the coffin of his dead uncle. You imagine
him there sitting in Crewe station, rain, maybe,
slanting by a single yellow street light, waiting
for the mailboat train. And you awe at how
he ended up signing docket after
carbon copy docket, the ticket lady
grimly nodding: Yes, she too had duties
such as this to bear in a universe
turned echoey strange and tumbling through lost.
And you’d imagine him wearing the loan of his
father’s woolen greatcoat in grey, fog-damp, morning
Dun Laoghaire, the mailboat just departing again,
seagulls swing and swoop, acolytes sent by glowering
death, to remind him and you that we are too young
for such responsibilities, no matter how
old we are. The coffin, silent freight,
echoes under the eaves a dumb
requiem into the screech
absorbing
fog.
It’s like what you’d hear by way of conversation
in a bar listening to a stranger tell how he,
too young for such responsibility, brought home
the coffin of his dead uncle. You imagine
him there sitting in Crewe station, rain, maybe,
slanting by a single yellow street light, waiting
for the mailboat train. And you awe at how
he ended up signing docket after
carbon copy docket, the ticket lady
grimly nodding: Yes, she too had duties
such as this to bear in a universe
turned echoey strange and tumbling through lost.
And you’d imagine him wearing the loan of his
father’s woolen greatcoat in grey, fog-damp, morning
Dun Laoghaire, the mailboat just departing again,
seagulls swing and swoop, acolytes sent by glowering
death, to remind him and you that we are too young
for such responsibilities, no matter how
old we are. The coffin, silent freight,
echoes under the eaves a dumb
requiem into the screech
absorbing
fog.