Autumn Evening, Hull ‘90

I

I wait -
studyingnotstudying -
in Larkin’s lair.
Feeling his disapproval from beyond the grave,
staring sternly at my inaction
behind austere black spectacles.
This was his library and his hidey-hole
as it is mine.
Both at home here
in this top-heavy white city castle.
This civilised and civilising squat suburban fortress,
this last outpost at the end of England.
A Dewey Decimal heaven in glass and steel;
an eight-storeyed storehouse, alphabetised;
a miracle of calm organisation
amid myriad messy lives.

I wait -
studyingnotstudying -
in this top floor eyrie.
This is not my territory; this is a foreign land where science rules –
the disordered, disorderly arts rightly buried deep below.
Can they spot the interloper,
more interested in skyline sunset and distant water-glimmer,
and bored with the task at hand?
Busy words clamour on the page, frustrated, for my attention -
implore me to lend them fresh meaning in shiny new lingo.
But my shoddy bargain basement translation skills
can wait for now.
Instead, I scan horizon for distant estuary,
landmarked now only by skeleton-shadow bridge and snaking train.
A disappearing twilight exit and escape route,
fading fast – my real home too far for me today.

II

I wait –
studyingnotstudying.
I wait for her.
Right now, she is, I imagine,
Lab-deep in test tubes, dissection kits and DNA.
She once showed me round:
part museum, mortuary and mausoleum;
a morose and maudlin mixture of glass cases,
chemical stink, and subtle hint of death.
I shuddered then, I shudder again.
Safe in my warm bookish haven, I gaze out
as sudden lightning shears the sky –
city skyline split-second bright,
like cartoon X-ray or 50s horror movie A-bomb flash.
Hail follows: clatters, scatters, shatters, ceases.
Sudden storm meets sudden silence.

I wait -
studyingnotstudying.
I wait for her.
I’ll soon become a master of that pointless, heirless art.
Fate and future soundtracked by tick-tick-ticking time.
Not today, not now - but my patience will prove sublime.
No, today, we’ll meet, kiss, leave, walk - in some mockery of love.
Freezing red-raw hands held tight against maritime city chill.
Down arrow-straight, bright-light bustling streets
and a daring detour through dark dispiriting park.
Its shabby and graffiti’d vandalised Victoriana, once scene of childish happiness,
fallen now, like Empire, into doomed disrepair.
Finally home: we go our separate ways.
Evening subtly sinks into typical grey-gloom mood -
the like of which, I think, Larkin might approve -
all cold comfort and confusion within stone terraced tomb.

Scab

Vigil