PYRAMID
All along the skyline, cranes
quiet above rooftops,
conspicuous as knives dropped
vertically into carpet,
folded ironing-board-upright
or set at right-
angles, corner brackets
bolting the sky to the ground.
They dangle claws on chains,
unbaited hooks
balanced by elevated breeze-blocks,
into the unfinished town,
fishing a pond
that hasn’t been stocked.
Their paint-work’s bright as macs
in rain, or the mops and pans
a woman once persuaded me to sell
door to door,
describing in the air
of her living room a pyramid,
most mysterious
of all mysterious extancies, her red
nail climbing floors
to the vertex, where it stood,
or floated,
as she effortlessly said
“in no time at all
you’ll have a lifestyle just like mine…”
Through the cranes’
necks the cloudburst rings,
across the clad
stone hotel still missing
its penthouse, its punchline,
bucketing down
like the old cartoon
where a skeleton drinks champagne.