Carolyn Oulton
The Reception of South Square
Gray’s Inn, where portly types
separate their plumage to get hands
at trouser pockets, squat
personages, mute from a slight distance,
words banked up like sandbags in the sun.
Either side of the arch company buildings,
one used now for conferences, down
to a basement with boxes of files against the wall.
On its other side supports Reception.
Company of duly bored ambition drifts to watch.
New important person trying hard
in answer to my joke,
to stress his own unfitness for the answering of phones.
Gallantly deferring to my skill
in deprecation of his intellect.
Today I am not answering the phones.
I shall let them ring all weekend.
Spare no thought for bans forbidding temps
to send personal emails at half minute intervals
thirty five hours in the week.
One phone call I smile for, when it comes
an hour or two beyond this early morning, where
I watched across the window as your face
slowly merged with sprays of leaf,
an arch of green and cream and so from sight.
separate their plumage to get hands
at trouser pockets, squat
personages, mute from a slight distance,
words banked up like sandbags in the sun.
Either side of the arch company buildings,
one used now for conferences, down
to a basement with boxes of files against the wall.
On its other side supports Reception.
Company of duly bored ambition drifts to watch.
New important person trying hard
in answer to my joke,
to stress his own unfitness for the answering of phones.
Gallantly deferring to my skill
in deprecation of his intellect.
Today I am not answering the phones.
I shall let them ring all weekend.
Spare no thought for bans forbidding temps
to send personal emails at half minute intervals
thirty five hours in the week.
One phone call I smile for, when it comes
an hour or two beyond this early morning, where
I watched across the window as your face
slowly merged with sprays of leaf,
an arch of green and cream and so from sight.
Page(s) 53
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