The Night Telephonist
(i.m. Peter Delaney)
A yellow bedroom, an empty cane chair,
inflections, colour, tone,
and that first great rule, steal the image
until you’ve made it your own.
Work a passage through old Europe,
hitching still a noble craft,
wind up spent, on Hydra,
say hello to Leonard for a laugh.
Come back with tall tales and rumours,
choose your poison in plain view,
medicinal amber in stubby glasses,
rum and coffee, just for you.
Join the outré crowd who can’t sit still,
make love on the run, work nights,
resurrect those unruly long lost calls
on a switchboard plug-in, bang to rights.
Send postcards with mercury tags,
lines of coke for Paul Klee,
fuse-wire, Duchamp style, to addresses,
catch up with the ghost of Kandinsky.
Distrust, discard the given narrative,
your stylus always stuttered on repeat,
keep posting those anonymous missives
and see what might come back complete.
Too tired to attend your one exhibition,
preferring to break in a new 12 string,
sourced in a pre-Haussmann warren
where Pierre Bensusan used to sing.
More your taste his fugitive recitals
in an Aungier Street, upstairs bar back room,
he too, trying to make himself heard
through the hazy fog of a lost afternoon.
When the last buses are long gone home,
engines idling on a frosty kerb line,
chauffeurs snooze with the morning edition,
and milk floats jump with adrenaline –
this is your time; a fox on the road,
suits still wrapped in papal sacs and sheets,
head for home as the dawn crackles
in a light that shines like a field of wheat.