K.M. Dersley
Never mind glory
Lived a life,
set up house above ground level
dishes were washed
curries prepared
in the kitchen higher than us
and looking with elbows on the table
down into the churchyard I realised
the uselessness of all the work
I had hitherto committed to paper
and resolved to go higher.
There was no one to whom
I could write for a reference
to exculpate whatever
I’d done or left hanging,
no one to detail work I’d made good
I had to prove it against my own sinews
and the minds of others
before the legions of the lost out there
getting big money as creative writing
fellows and sitters on panels of this
and holding ‘surgeries’ of that.
My hold on sanity is such that I
have to know they will win no more or
less than is their due, just as if
they were toiling alongside
the cabinet makers at Alston’s
or the shit pumpers at Orwell Works, Ltd.
Page(s) 50
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