Urban Eclogues
1
Adrift in the middle of my years, I sit in a corner and drink. I eavesdrop
a tableful of girls romancing their cell phones, workshopping
love’s abstract particulars,
while football plays on the big screen;
I listen like a thief in case the women know the score.
But I never could tell. At fulltime I walk home like a motherless child.
2
Witness is a solitary game. There isn’t a thing I have left to say
but back in my room I ring like a singing bowl,
empty and unable to stop.
You’re in nine kinds of pain, my friend; you know
the twenty-seven strains of despair. And your lovely hair has fallen.
The moon at my window is a rusted shot, caught in its corrupt trajectory down.
3
The world was always someone else’s oyster, a metaphor
I never could prise open.
All I’m good for tonight
is to let the night pass,
while beyond me the world peters and my friend fights beautifully
like a trout on god’s line. The usual idiots are still in power. But they’ll keep.
Mark Tredinnick, “Urban Eclogues” audio from The Road South, Audio CD, River Road Press, 2008, text from Fire Diary, Puncher & Wattmann, 2010: by permission of River Road Press and the poet. Copyright © 2008, 2010 by Mark Tredinnick.
Source:
Fire Diary
(Puncher & Wattmann Poetry, 2010)