Edwin Brock
A Letter To Jim Burns
There’s always another weekend
when everything can start
and it is a true feeling. This
is the temptation of art: it is
always about to become itself.
I hold tightly to the memory
of my maternal aunt whose
stool in the Palace Tavern
will surely earn a blue plaque:
She sat from eleven to three
and then from six to eleven
364 days of the year. We do not
know what she did on Good Friday.
I remember the Canadian lecturer
who said to me ‘You’re not
Aunt Nance’s nephew!’ Later
he got to read my poetry.
Over and over again these starts
defeat themselves. This,
for instance, lost its meaning
when I left my aunt behind.
Jim, there is more hope in Preston
than WC2 and your dead goldfish
haunts my leaning elbow. I wish
I could write Revolution and
mean more than my pension. But
I was always too frightened, my
mother told me, to say Boo to a goose.
That voice is in the hallway
and the door is closing. Yesterday
passed without too much pain. There
will be another weekend when everything
can start. It is a true feeling
and I know you will understand.
Page(s) 31
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