Own up

Which lout has chucked dust in the calendar’s eyes

So the weeks wobble past, and the weekends are blind,

And the days drip and dribble?

Which new Luther has pinned up these strange proclamations

On shuttered shop windows? Morose intimations

Of virulent rabble?

Who has stolen the sound of the engines, replaced them

With finches and magpies and birdsong and plainsong

And indolent angels?

Who shrouded the playgrounds in velvet-fog silence

That choked up the classrooms and shushed up the cadence

Of break-time choirs’ giggles?

Is there anything sadder than boarded-up pubs?

All that ale turning sour in barrels and pumps,

When cocktails are curdled?

Who piled-up these market-stall skeleton shapes?

These metal bones rusting, their cloth bodies draped

Over nothing and no-one?

Was it you who threw salt in my eyes? Burned my face?

Can you see underwater? Make out the shapes

Of sharks sniffing blood?

If we ever emerge, blinking, out of this mire

Can we re-set the months and the days and the hours

Of March and of April?

Whilst the calendar’s blinded, we must get it done;

We must take back control of this non-time that’s come,

And sort out this muddle.

A New New Year’s Eve and we’ll work on the rest:

A couple of leap-months, make it a contest

To name them, and people

Will soon forget the louts, the Luthers,

the sound-thieves, the shushers.

The boards will come down

And the skeletons stir and yawn.

And the sharks.

Well.

They die if they stop
So,

I hope one day they will.