Malcolm Carson
Edgar in Stanwix
Traffic lights on Stanwix Bank.
I sup the smell of resin from
bark of logs from Borders hills
stacked high and neat as matches
on juggernauts that strain and lurch
against their brakes in a fog of fumes.
In the Crown I settle to
others' banter, take comfort from
apartness, work on the riddle
of myself amid all this.
Poor Tom, look at stains
on chairs and faces through filter of smoke
grotesqueries of teeth, leers,
see reflected what I imagine is
myself in mirrors above the bar.
Too many of me here. Am I all
the same? Whose meagre crown is this,
on Scotland Road? Do I belong
north or south? I turn to the window
see the cyber café close,
logging off identities
across the ether that settle in
the mind, as real as blood, as ratsbane.
O! do de, do de, do de.
In Tarraby Lane I count the hedge:
holly, alder, maple, beech,
plashed, pleached, layered - where am
I from? Sheep avoid me as does
the pelting moon above the vallum.
Do I hear cavalry's drum on the plain?
Spectres who stripped others of
their souls - unhappy ditto - fashioned
new selves that sit as well as armour.
Should I look in this marsh pool, draw
aside its oily curtain, find
someone looking out beyond
my best, my worst imaginings?
I can pick kingdoms in the bark
of hawthorn, split them, make bigger
on a whim. I can sleep with the holly
against my cheek, suffer cold winds
and persecutions of the sky.
Why then, Tom... Edgar is all one?
I sup the smell of resin from
bark of logs from Borders hills
stacked high and neat as matches
on juggernauts that strain and lurch
against their brakes in a fog of fumes.
In the Crown I settle to
others' banter, take comfort from
apartness, work on the riddle
of myself amid all this.
Poor Tom, look at stains
on chairs and faces through filter of smoke
grotesqueries of teeth, leers,
see reflected what I imagine is
myself in mirrors above the bar.
Too many of me here. Am I all
the same? Whose meagre crown is this,
on Scotland Road? Do I belong
north or south? I turn to the window
see the cyber café close,
logging off identities
across the ether that settle in
the mind, as real as blood, as ratsbane.
O! do de, do de, do de.
In Tarraby Lane I count the hedge:
holly, alder, maple, beech,
plashed, pleached, layered - where am
I from? Sheep avoid me as does
the pelting moon above the vallum.
Do I hear cavalry's drum on the plain?
Spectres who stripped others of
their souls - unhappy ditto - fashioned
new selves that sit as well as armour.
Should I look in this marsh pool, draw
aside its oily curtain, find
someone looking out beyond
my best, my worst imaginings?
I can pick kingdoms in the bark
of hawthorn, split them, make bigger
on a whim. I can sleep with the holly
against my cheek, suffer cold winds
and persecutions of the sky.
Why then, Tom... Edgar is all one?
Malcolm Carson was brought up in Lincolnshire and Belfast and now lives in Carlisle. He was recently featured in Take Five, a collection from five poets (Shoestring Press).
Page(s) 48-49
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