Smithereens Press Chapbooks 'Zero at the Bone' by David Wheatley | Page 24

SCENE SIX
MCDONALD
Hour after hour finds lined up, stern to prow,
boats from Monrovia, Gdansk or Nassau,
fabulous holds containing Lord knows what,
a UN of unknowns sailing past each night.
Try out my binoculars on the view
and someone’s training his right back on you.
[Pause.] I see things that are there and things that aren’t.
At me too they are looking. [Pause.] What do you want?
[Pause.] To think I stand here gazing at the south bank
and ask why life clings on somewhere so blank,
human life that is, life other than mine,
as if a total blank wouldn’t suit me fine.
A low tide’s worth of curlews now, or ruff,
or godwits, that’s what I call world enough,
here where earth and sea and sky collide
and the only place a man might hide’s a hide.
I never saw a bird I would not follow
if only mine were, like birds’ bones are, hollow.
But look at my Irishman and his ‘fool research’.
Art should soar, not wallow in the ditch
of postcolonial this and gender that.
Philip Larkin then, still guilty or what?
Racist, woman-hating empire thug?
Forgive me if I fail to give a fuck.
The wind among the reeds and a lapwing’s cry:
that’s research, or a thought that might yet fly.
And what if no one, nor God nor I, is there
when it cries, is there still a noise to hear?
[Pause.] Last night I could have sworn I saw the splash
of a man gone overboard and into the wash.
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