Gordon Wharton
Sundown
No sooner has the first dust settled
on your Punt e Mes than a fresh boy-rider
stirs the piazza with a handbrake turn
in his rustled Mustang: vintage, off-red.
A second circuit still unfinished,
his nearside tyres collapse with the dull
flub noise of an old horse farting,
and he limps off in a cloud lit from within.
Under the colonnade, the flapping of OAPs
brushing down their suits might almost
be applause. Say what you like, the ancients
relish good yarns. Drink up. You could
spin this one out at least as far
as the crossroads pile-up, the pre-destined
blasted oak where a young man dangles,
strung by a fan-belt or a pair of tights,
and ravens play. They expect that much,
if not the Fair Isle sweater and faded jeans
- new-fangled gear that neither you nor they
would care to be found dead in.
Gordon Wharton had two small collections of verse published in the mid-to-late 1950s: This & That (Fantasy Press, 1955) and Errors of Observation (The School of Art, University of Reading, 1957). Now, after a silence of nearly 30 years, he feels himself ‘shuffling hesitantly’ towards a Selected - probably to be called Touch Wood.
Page(s) 85-86
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