Sense of Urgency
Future residents : There’s not much time
to make a life, to find something which makes
you happy, the world is not cut that way,
not so easy as it looks to fit in, the ground
shifts under you, new tools with strange
names and voices coming out of odd
machines, drugs to stop you feeling,
friends and family at dinner tables
who will love you and betray you,
rents with tricky early termination
clauses, grown-ups who never had
childhoods, children whose bodies
aged and were great consumers,
the sadness of trying to get everything
right. Future residents : There’s not
much time to be in the same book,
forget the same page, your Aunt Rose
will squeeze blackheads out of your face,
your father’s best friend will leave
you a copy of Shakespeare and get you
drunk for the first time, the scent
of a teenage crush will follow you
into train station after train station, but,
there’s not much time, Matisse knew this,
Einstein knew this, the person who laid
the bricks for your house knew this.
Let’s walk to the top of the street
and enjoy the view, suck in the sweet air,
lay our arms around each other,
feel the beautiful stones under our sore
feet, listen for the far-off barking of dogs,
the convoluted road leading you
to the outskirts of almost being
where you want to be, its rivers,
its snakes, its desert, its sky,
its gossip, its mystery, its trouble,
its song, its crime, its plazas
emptying into your hands.
RS/2017