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Mick Imlah

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Eleven

Word was, he had given himself
Yet more of the common cake, in perpetuity:
That night I loathed his shifting face.
At the wedding of the third lieutenant,
As I looked up from the scrum of the dance
In which all other ranks were linked,
I saw the former ‘leader’ of sons
Tangoing with an old woman in turquoise,
Each going the further in display
With lizard moves, he longing his tongue
Like a scandalous rabbi in pantaloons.

*

‘During the BBC’s transmission on Sunday
Of the Remembrance Service from Whitehall,
Talking and other sounds were clearly heard
Through the Two Minutes’ Silence, as it’s known,
Which some of us look forward to all year.
Is it not possible to broadcast silence?’

Here, then, is part of that silence,
With some of its interruptions—caused, we gather,
By a party of Scandinavian boy scouts
Making their way from Chelsea to the Tower
Caught up in their own prodigious enterprise.

Page(s) 30

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