The Warrior Considers The Real
There was a certain amount of muck and gore:
the lawn’s still heavy with it in the early morning.
La madrugada – it sounds like a cross
between a profane canticle and a woman walking
slowly, very slowly to her last tryst
with someone she couldn’t quite save, though she tried, she tried…
I doubt if my neighbour knew when he spread the grass
and clipped… Happily, the sun mops it dry
occasionally and he lays his towel out like a flag of leisure,
as if there was nothing missing. Reality
is like that, it doesn’t carry very far.
It isn’t too much reality we can’t bear,
but too little too soon. Some animal’s been at the binbags
again – tins, bacon-rinds: everything turns to mess
in a trice. Which is why we honour the mistaken
no less than the ones who never aspired in the first place.
From SHIELD (Parthian 2010)
