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Hackney! Sunday! Rain!
Hackney! Sunday! Rain! You know the sort of day.
Black empty trees against a desolate sky.
Expressionless people buying sad daffodils outside the hospital,
people unaccustomed to flowers except for births, marriages
and death.
So many people come into this place
and so many go out, you know how,
and have their first contact with the earth
in God knows how long.
And here my father is going to die.
I walk to his bed where he smiles at me
although he is already dead,
his milk-white eyes taking,
taking their last look at the world.
He moans, over and over again.
Why? Why am I here? I have no pain?
He has nothing now to tell us, we his gathered children.
a nondescript life sliding into oblivion,
a nobody going nowhere, becoming no-one,
like everyone.
Yet death brings his face distinction,
breeding tells and his skull showing through
is as good as anyone’s.
Cancer! Whisper it! Do not let him hear.
Have you seen the doctor? Is there any hope?
What did the sister say? Someone said someone worse than him
lived for another year.
How long? How long? How long do you think it will take?
I look out of the window.
Who knows, perhaps he can outlast the world.
Haven’t you noticed a sudden deterioration
in almost everything?
The body of the world seems to be wasting away,
the face and the heart and the brain seem to decay,
yet we pray and hope or try to hope and pray,
try to remove the growth to live for another day.
Guilty, that I am not; grieving, because I cannot,
I run out into the world,
try to whistle, try not to weep.
And quickly get the tube away…
2000
