THIS VIOLENT SKY

As night falls in the pedestrians-only precinct, the twin sisters
sing in a constant round, overlapping, over and again
My/love is good
My/love is kind
My/love is all for you

I would (love to) stand and feel the glow of the song
but places are never like this for long.
Our minds take us wherever they need us to be.
Whenever’s another matter but that too.
I remember when we had no particular place to go.
All the same we knew the way.

Cluster bombs of napalm follow orders, are buried with full military honours.
Out on the bright sea something sparkles.

A fox behind the bins on the office forecourt, caught by security cameras,
the lights placed precisely in the (Do Not Step On The) grass.

This violent sky. We’re all witnesses. You and you and you.
History cries itself to sleep every night.
A boy in 1968 looks out of his bedroom window, at what?

I couldn’t have written a diary, I’m not honest enough.
The lovely girl I wish I’d known writes in hers:
Washed tights. Did the ironing.

A neighbour lends me The Domesday Book,
complains that the hornets which have built a nest
in the door frame of the shed
where we store old chairs and a washing machine
that one day we’ll take the drum from
to use as a fire-pit
are eating their apples.

Before dawn a blackbird begins its song.
A beer bottle placed carefully upright by a lamp post.

A reversing delivery van takes out the immaculate fence
of the immaculate people opposite.

Walk, just walk as far as you can.

A motor bike stranded in a newly laid hedge.
You were hitching, remember, wouldn’t take no for an answer.
A magpie pecks at moss on the roof of an abandoned tractor.

There are only a handful of tickets left.
He gave her tulips at Easter.

Whatever happened to that boy who sent you a birthday card
with a message that read From A Secret Admirer?

A housing estate covers the pond where Uncle Oliver drowned.
The roe deer that watched him walk into the water
looks back at me from the edge of the woods,
lopes away into the darkness, as sometimes we all must.

The empty spaces in the family, in memory.
Those who leave and do not return.
A sniper’s bullet.
He looked as if he’d fallen asleep.

Sheep graze on sea-stacks, hundreds
of metres above the waves
as more orders are followed
more bombs, more graves.
Don’t be crass, it’s necessary

Out of focus, a reddening universe.

It’s madness out there, in here too.

You take my hand, say

how
long
do
we
have
until
stillness
empties
into
stillness