The earth, the sea and the human spirit are getting tired of the city
The city builds a city in its margins
And builds another city at its core.
The city writes the lives of other people –
Erases yours, engraves theirs in its stone.
The city writes a blue plaque on a lifetime.
A lifetime writes a weary back-and-forth
From home to street, from bus stop to the office.
The office writes its boredom on a face.
The banknotes squiggle faces on a thumbprint.
The currency has launched itself downstream.
A bridge divides the suburbs, poor and wealthy.
The tracks are laid; the tanks are coming in.
A brush is splodging paint. A pot is spinning.
A loom is casting light on woven light.
The texture of the city is its people.
The people are in mothballs. Taken fright.
The ache of living’s numbing. Gulping sadness
I stagger down the street to down a pint.
The milkman starts his round in early morning.
A detector finds a coin. He finds me.
He finds me as a digger finds a helmet.
He finds me as he excavates a sword.
He finds a heap of rust, a crumbling fossil.
He finds a trace of life. He finds a pulse.
He finds me and he floats me down the river.
He pushes me and sends me out to sea.
He questions all my remnants as he pushes
The raft I’m on, the water underneath.
He swims beside me till we find a dolphin.
He swims behind me when we find a shark.
The city’s far behind, the milk abandoned.
The sea’s throat rattles, gargles TCP.
The sea has taken ill; it’s in the city.
The sea wants back its poisoned life again.
The sea is washing up upon your doorstep.
The bankers float the currency and groan.
They’re racing for the stairs – the lift is broken.
The cleaners block their way with seven mops.
“The clean-up job will take a generation.”
In private the PM admits we’re stuffed.
The journos get the story but the paper
Is pulping in the river – there’s a jam
Of logs that days ago were living giants.
There’s a funeral of bonfires in the town.
There’s a race to save your skin and to adorn it
With painted pictures from another age.
There’s an engine pushing wildlife to the margins.
There are teeth tearing off the city’s skin.
There are questions I would ask you – come back here now!
There are times we never met and days we missed –
Those unsaid words you’re scrawling on your haunches –
Those ways we never did it, unborn kids.
There are places round the corner we could visit.
There are friends we have who never came to tea.
There are plants we never planted in our garden.
There are trees to climb and promises to keep.
She shakes me off: the earth is getting stronger.
The earth is shitting out the city’s shit.
My days of dirt are done: earth calls me faithless
And screams that she is dying, gives a roar.
Chris Fewings 2014
This poem was first published in Ink, Sweat & Tears (edited by Helen Ivory) in 2014. I recall writing it quickly one afternoon at the end of February that year, when I was hanging out at Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham. Somewhere at the back of my mind was the driving rhythm and tumble of images in Louis MacNeice’s poem Bagpipe Music. Maybe there’s a faint echo of Auden’s ‘As I walked out one evening’ in there too.
I’ve often performed it live (once at a noisy pub with a heckler). It was broadcast on Brum Radio, and it’s in my book, A Place to Keep My Shadow. I tweak it occasionally, but it’s changed very little from the initial rush of hastily scribbled thoughts. The recording below was made by Rob Peters, at a reading I gave in Kings Heath. But this reading sounds a bit hurried to me now. Must try harder.