Society
SOCIETY
We poured from the pub that abyssal night,
A full pint of rain dripping from our noses.
Flowed down waving streets of aching hands
And were gratefully absorbed by our houses.
Waking from millimetres of sleep,
To board crumbling trains in the deep-sea rust,
We still believed in some perfect room
Left over from the night, where we trust
That the women, still, come and go
And they, Still, talk of Michelangelo.
But to teach that the night-struggle is glorious
And to preach that we must always strive
Is merely to leave a choice between
Holy repentance and free, pagan pride
And if my next move, now, is a choice between
Rook to knight four, or knight to rook four,
How can I choose the latter
If the former is, still, the board?
Body
My father, once, said I should start smoking
in the same pernicious, smiling breath
that he advised me to work in the city
for the few years of my youth I had left.
Where the endless March tides would carry me,
With the slow wavelength of nicotine
That sea of camphor would embrace me,
and gently stroke my memory clean.
But remember just one thing, my son
In the whiplash of your final December,
When your swollen arteries are clogged,
When your spite is almost dead, remember;
That our eyes, my brother,
and our minds are merely other
Weapons of imperfection
with which to punish one another.
