Chris Beckett
The weather at work
Today, a nimbostratus has followed me
into the underground,
where I’m strap-hanging with a book of poems
including Pound and Frank O’Hara,
and everyone around me hunches their shoulders
as if my cloud might cause a storm.
It’s certainly black enough, growling like a bear,
and bolts of lightning poke their nails out of its stomach.
But I’m not scared of rain:
I’m a petal on a wet black bough,
I’m Frank O’Hara on my way to lunch with
excitement-prone Kenneth Koch in Soho or St Germain,
or I’m a petal on its way to lunch
in a lovely sunlit poppy-field in Provence,
or maybe I’m a lunch of petals, a salad of poppies
growing dark and velvety between the tracks,
daily watered by a nimbostratus of the underground
as it follows me to work—
and when I get there, will there be hundreds of emails
cumulating in the sky,
a blizzard of faxes, bargains crackling, hurricanes
of futures purchases and sales?
Or will it be a calm day, horizontal pens,
phone-banks drizzling as we discuss where to have lunch,
though to be honest we always go to Pizza Express on
Victoria Street
or Simply Nico round the corner in Rochester Row,
because they’re reasonably priced
and they know just how to peel a coat off at the door,
or leave you black with rain while you study the menu.
into the underground,
where I’m strap-hanging with a book of poems
including Pound and Frank O’Hara,
and everyone around me hunches their shoulders
as if my cloud might cause a storm.
It’s certainly black enough, growling like a bear,
and bolts of lightning poke their nails out of its stomach.
But I’m not scared of rain:
I’m a petal on a wet black bough,
I’m Frank O’Hara on my way to lunch with
excitement-prone Kenneth Koch in Soho or St Germain,
or I’m a petal on its way to lunch
in a lovely sunlit poppy-field in Provence,
or maybe I’m a lunch of petals, a salad of poppies
growing dark and velvety between the tracks,
daily watered by a nimbostratus of the underground
as it follows me to work—
and when I get there, will there be hundreds of emails
cumulating in the sky,
a blizzard of faxes, bargains crackling, hurricanes
of futures purchases and sales?
Or will it be a calm day, horizontal pens,
phone-banks drizzling as we discuss where to have lunch,
though to be honest we always go to Pizza Express on
Victoria Street
or Simply Nico round the corner in Rochester Row,
because they’re reasonably priced
and they know just how to peel a coat off at the door,
or leave you black with rain while you study the menu.
Chris Beckett won first prize in the Poetry London Competition 2001. His first collection, The dog who thinks he’s a fish, is published by Smith Doorstop in Spring 2004.
Page(s) 27
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