{"id":10649,"date":"2019-09-09T18:43:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T17:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10649"},"modified":"2019-09-26T11:32:07","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T10:32:07","slug":"two-poems-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10649","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Comeback<\/h5>\n

There I was
\nhunched over a canso<\/em>
\nin the aparthotel,<\/p>\n

the day grey,
\nthe year unclear
\nand the bed empty.<\/p>\n

A city again,
\njackhammers and cranes,
\nthe district<\/p>\n

repeating itself,
\nrising from the mud
\nfor the umpteenth time.<\/p>\n

My love<\/em>, I began,
\nwhat have I done
\nto wake up again?<\/em><\/p>\n

From the tangle
\nof centuries
\nslipped out <\/p>\n

to begin, set down
\nlike a native
\nwith someone\u2019s language<\/p>\n

in my mouth,
\nsomeone\u2019s dismal sky
\nto look at.<\/p>\n

Can I really own
\nthese hands,
\nthese eyes darting<\/p>\n

from building to building,
\nface to face,
\nyour absence <\/p>\n

cunningly disguised
\nas a street in spate,
\na bridge raised to let<\/p>\n

alien futures through?
\nNot mine, surely,
\nany of it, who have seen<\/p>\n

so many places,
\nsuch promising verandas,
\nvistas of intent,<\/p>\n

fields of lavender and corn,
\necstasies of hawthorn
\nand autumn birches<\/p>\n

and pitched
\nover rough seas
\npast stacked containers<\/p>\n

into harbour after harbour.
\nMy love<\/em>, I began,
\nyour absence is a tax<\/p>\n

each journey pays.
\nWith every mile
\ncoins fly through my fingers,<\/p>\n

the revenues of desire
\nheaped on a floor.<\/em>
\nDid that work?<\/p>\n

What do you think?
\nStacked containers,
\nsignage,<\/p>\n

entering the city
\non a river of names …
\nOrchards, dockyards,<\/p>\n

desert fortresses in which
\nonly fleetingly
\nyou appeared,<\/p>\n

long treks in parks,
\nby heron-swept waters.
\nThere\u2019s a place<\/p>\n

I feast on
\nwhere your head
\neven still<\/p>\n

turns slowly
\nin my direction.
\nYou are about to speak,<\/p>\n

your lips are moving
\nthen I blink
\nand it\u2019s somewhere else,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking
\ndown the length
\nof a long room,<\/p>\n

you swim
\nthrough a crowd
\nand the building <\/p>\n

collapses: through a crack
\nin the pavement
\nwe sink <\/p>\n

to a woodland path,
\nimpossible songs
\ndistracting the leaves.<\/p>\n

My love<\/em>, I began,
\nthere must have been a time
\nwe called our own.<\/em><\/p>\n

Must have been
\nan aeon for hands,
\nfor tongues<\/p>\n

fruitful and rapid,
\nfor waking to
\nlove\u2019s old accords.<\/p>\n

Silence. The crane
\nswings round.
\nYellow hats, high-viz<\/p>\n

vests. What began
\nin the orchard
\narrives in the street,<\/p>\n

what began as leaf
\nfalls as dust,
\nwhat began as song<\/p>\n

wakes as an argument
\nnailed to time,
\nwhat began as voice<\/p>\n

freezes to edict.
\nWas there a day
\nneither of us moved?<\/p>\n

What began in wool
\nis undone in satin,
\nwhere silk fell<\/p>\n

has grown a hotel.
\nAl-Andalus
\nthe nape of your neck<\/p>\n

but a Ming curl
\ntouches your cheek.
\nWe rise together<\/p>\n

to walk the dawn.
\nThe centuries, as always,
\nswirl through the grasses.
\n\u200b
\n<\/p>\n

Offers<\/h5>\n

These aisles of unlikeness
\na kind of perfection
\nas if here we might be, when it\u2019s all over,
\nwalking through fields of Lidl finding<\/p>\n

among the lawnmowers and beetroots
\nwhat we always half knew we half needed
\nbut blind to the instinct and quelling desire
\nyet failed to achieve <\/p>\n

and this is what carried through:
\nhow we moved, mixing and matching
\nforests and plums, steamers, toys,
\nthe mutilated flickering on a screen,<\/p>\n

dawdling through it all, filling our arms
\nwith what we found,
\nunlikeness our element, our prayers
\nthe trundling of trolleys in the aisles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Comeback There I was hunched over a canso in the aparthotel, the day grey, the year unclear and the bed empty. A city again, jackhammers and cranes, the district repeating itself, rising from the mud for the umpteenth time. My love, I began, what have I done to wake up again? From the tangle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[379,380],"tags":[388],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Poems - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10649\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10649&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Poems - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Comeback There I was hunched over a canso in the aparthotel, the day grey, the year unclear and the bed empty. A city again, jackhammers and cranes, the district repeating itself, rising from the mud for the umpteenth time. My love, I began, what have I done to wake up again? 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