Across the quiet street, day dusted down
and bonfires in the air, a blackbird:
its harsh teek teek warning, insistent.

Up the twitten, the flat building
silhouettes black and matt against
a peachskin sky, pink-orange, alight,

perched up high, alert, blackie
number two. Random lonely falling
phrases call through sagging tangles

of clematis, over the flint wall
tense with foliage, among the sticky
weeded wilderness, slipping in between
 
meadowgrass, ribwort, ox-eyed daisy,
sleepily bedding down plants in green,
teasing the hidden occupants there:

now the food-gathering has stopped,
the panting calms, no more rustling,
their tiny bodies still and lulled.

And then, quiet. Obeying the moon and
the ashen air, just the angular misshapes
looming, the yellow eye in the night.

Don’t bother me now
with valves, cylinders,
sleek bodywork, the thrill
of the open road; of this
I’ve no need – it’s all torque
and handling, raunchy metaphors,
dreams at idling speed -
boys’ toys.

And yet, and yet
today something choked me;
essence of Pininfarina
injected this quiet neck,
oil blacked out my breath,
power pushed back at my foot,
ground became air, I swear
the machine provoked me,
opened my mouth in a mighty ‘O’
uprooted my complacency,
with its fat heart in tow.

Oh! Delano, the Delano,
Your candied cool-mood walls,
Ethereal flow of muslin white
Billowing through your halls –
The tender gurgle of discreet chat
All blond wood, stone and glass,
The candled, moonlit terraces
Through which the rich may pass,
And in the night-blue oblong pool
That stretches to the beach
A body floats and eyes a drink
Sublimely out of reach.

Love-gutted and weak
I watch and listen in vain
for Harpo to speak

The beach was sandy; I expected stones -
So careless was my memory of the place -
And, leaning on the rail, the squalling moans
Of seagulls right above, I turned to face
A group there playing ball, refusing still
To let the middle-evening ebb away:
Ignoring tiredness and the dead light chill,
Their figures strangely featureless and grey.
My gaze took in the plain of hard wet sand -
Rippled here and there by ribs of sea -
And looking up where water left the land,
The flat horizon stopped, but seemed to me
To bow before a perfect dome of sky,
So large, I wondered how it fit my eye.

August was hot.
Me and Pat drank pints
at The Beehive, saw James Bond
at the Odeon, worked
at the council, nine to five.
‘The Professionals’ on TV -
I liked Martin Shaw,
Pat said ‘phwooar’
about the other one.

Tony was my boss.
‘I love your walk’ he said
and begged me into bed.
Me, nonplussed, agreed.
His Fiesta – small, knowing -
rocked as I learned
of his wife, and more.
Thought lust could run and run.
Nineteen eighty one.

Autumn came, I left.
His age, my student ways
cracked his skull. He was dull.
And knew it. ‘I’ll miss you,’
he said. Me, lying, agreed.
Tears in the laundrette,
‘The Professionals’ on TV -
The affair was done.
Nineteen eighty one.

Somehow he lifts it all -
the tawdry shops decked out
with city grime, the clumps
of aimless, scuffing youths
the ritual rush hour trial -
Signor Vivaldi, here inside my car,
full strings ahead in clean air
counterpoint of joy.

Then at the lights I brake
and, mouth open as that ‘domine fili’
wells up, spills out, I turn
and meet him eye to eye.

A glassy stare like that
perhaps once fired a man,
or told a stabbing truth – I’m glad
I wasn’t there, but here
just music separates us.
I could be a name on a grave,
a face on TV, a screen grab -
he won’t remember me.

And I try not to wish just then
for a passenger -
to see the funny side,
to sing the bass line.

a smallish boy with an old man’s name
he’ll tell you you’re wrong again and again
at restaurants he’ll have rainbow trout
but dreams of lego when the lights go out

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