21 st June 2002
So I'm standing at the bus stop, stunned and only half awake.
All I know is, it's 2:1 to Brazil and not over yet.
It'd been 1:1 at the cob shop, shutters up but no customers,
we might as well be muffled by a foot of snow.
At the post office they watched it on the black and white,
nervous as another break in.
It was Owen who'd woken me up – the roar from the factory
I'd thought it was on fire again – then I'd remembered.
So now I'm on the bus next to a woman
telling me about killing sick chickens in Jamaica,
performing post mortems on hens.
She said they got so thin the wind blew them over.
She found kinks like bent fingers in the intestines,
coconut straw in the gizzards.
Fascinated her to the knife point.
She said her husband used to work at Boots,
heavy manual – big man, strong man,
had to be dragged off every shift.
And then he got thin,
so she knew before he did, before the doctors did –
because of things the chickens taught her.
If he'd lived they might have –
she gets off at the Chinese wholesalers.
And then we're in town and I know it's over.
Don't have to ask. Can't ask.
Streets full of people and I'm walking
into a wall of sadness,
The end of the World Cup.
A man leans against the railings on Parliament Street
opposite a flag in a café window. He can't look at it –
has to stand opposite it.
He's too weak to stand.
Somebody comes over to him, could be anybody,
stands really close, doesn't put his arm round
but the arm's there. Tender.
And I'm standing here alone, with this misery
lapping over my ankles, it's sucking me in,
I'm loosing my grip and I have to remember,
this, has nothing to do with me.
If there was a wind, it would blow me over.
©Rosie Garner |
