Having The Nose For It
The taste of blood's medicinal teaspoonfuls, Slow trickling down your throat, was sweet and warm, And it meant three quarters of an hour off school, Flat on the floor of an echoing cloakroom. As I lay unmoving, bare legs to the cool Linoleum and eyes screwed shut, I tried To summon solitude and silence. If You concentrated, all the airy, wide Contingencies of life beyond the cliffs Of scarf and burberry on either side, Milk-bottle clunks, loud whispers, giggles and Occasional crumps of anger, simplified Themselves into a tapestry of sound Like the swish of leaves and birdsong. Then you died, Then you caught your fluttering soul in your cupped hand And loosed it down a dust-filled shaft of sun, The poet habit, hammered from defeats. So the four-eyed twats, unhandy with a gun, Drowsing deliciously could feel like Keats And, had I heard of him, I would have done.
John Whitworth
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