The Wall

A try-again-dinner picked up off the floor,
a you-can-do-better carton of cold tea,
crumpled, with naughty-boy bent straw,
bedwetting from the table, not wheeled away,
pulled-off legs, still cycling to work,
black toes, snagging aertex blanket,
baring Belsen buttocks, and a farted mess
to rub reality in.

The nice vicar had a way with words:


death’s a wall and one day


we’ll see what’s on the other side -


the need for a good run-up


and mind the barbed wire,


tactfully omitted, I thought,

remembering


pulling off the motorway six months before,


and the blood bypassing the narrow roads


of his brain - the rest of him needing it


as he reached for the door


with me ringing and her with her trouble


in the bathroom, shrieking don’t go.

And then his slipping,


eyes averted, from his chair,


made me the stranger he’d never tell


what he could see behind him.


No last-minute bequest,


just an overripe head to catch,


the terror in her eyes, and myself hoping


he’d go for it there and then -

but, always a shopkeeper, he carried on


and carried on, well after closing time.

What a good idea of hers to pop


into the nice vicar’s church-hall at Christmas


to cure the empty house


and see about that wall -


pity about the children


and their toys,


getting under her feet.

.