Film Still in Camden

Film Still in Camden Town

Went to Camden in sunlight
to check out the ready mades, cool
by the fish and flans, couldn’t find the water.
Outside on the street, thought about
the fire, the wreck burnt out,
rage burnt out, stalls, boxer reeling,
security guard with coffee and skinny ribs.

I walked up to the cross roads, a week later,
and took this photo, staring at the people-rushes,
one week after the fire before the railway bridge.
Camden Lock: business picking up, the car makes;
Photographed the Odeon letters
Making deep shadows, young actors
In the world, aggressive gait, ambling at me.

The fire again, the wreck:
think of starting a poem to a boxer
still sent packing, sickening reeling,
still packing punches, sickening blow.
He got it in the ribs; got stuck.

I photo-shopped the first car too much,
looks like a ghost car, only the central group
stand out: young actors against the station –
something about to happen; the beginning
of a film. I turned and walked past the flow
er stall: dozens watching this time real.
Ash falling, heat enough to twist metal,
red night sky reflecting on his smooth sweat:
the boxer, muscles rippling, keeps on coming.

Deep Roots

Poetry Pivotal 2

These hesitations, advances,
doublings back & crossings out,
snakes-and-ladders, scrapings
at opaque prisms of light

a Tolkien ordeal of
winding precipices and milky depths
that takes me to the realisation
I am clinging to a secret

that leads and holds me back –
it’s the reason the horizon’s tilting
all ways, and why the poem
is suspended in a tunnel of jet

until its scraps and stages
gather into one shape and make
a faint beam for the next few steps,
a yellow circle for the white page,

the beginning of a re-enacting
in the arc of a new shedder of light
more positive than torch or match,
a strong light mirrored, sun

in a distant morning, reaching here.
My fighting black characters straddle
the bridge; lying back on a ledge
I drink the safe shadow and go on.


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