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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Andrew Detheridge

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Crutches

Although no postcards can be purchased
showing the main attractions,
strangers to the village
almost always pass comment.

With polaroid-eyes, they shy away
from the one-legged men,
spearing their way along the pavements
below the deep-veined blackness
of the silent pithead.

When they have vanished around a corner,
open-mouthed gestures implore bystanders
to explain the puzzling frequency
with which they pass;
one trouser-leg pinned loosely
Somewhere above the knee.

Usually
they will be told of the failed cables,
sending cages of grimy miners
plummeting down the hurtling black
of the whistling mineshaft,
the only chance of survival
to stand on one leg
at the moment of impact.

Often
a local will ask them -
if you had only a handful of seconds
to consider,
from the bulging snap of the cable
to the deadheading crumbling of bone and tendon
which leg would you save?

 

Page(s) 46-47

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