Brian Wake
All Relative
I often have to grapple with the void,
to keep on going when ahead
seems only slightly less, the jackdaw said,
ridiculous than dying in the street,
more stupid to pursue.
And sometimes I imagine, on the rue
de la Vielle Lanterne, I have,
the jackdaw said, become no more
than just a bundle, kicked along
by shoolboys, of despair.
And through the window of a cheap hotel,
each afternoon, inconsequential I,
from there, might watch as, pouring
generous measures from a bottle, Baudelaire,
although alone, might raise his glass
to no-one but, the jackdaw said, an empty chair,
might stretch his arm and take nobody’s hand
and kiss the air, might stand and intimate
goodbye, might settle back and fold
his handkerchief and fold his handkerchief
again into a dozen squares.
Page(s) 65
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