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Martyn Crucefix

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The Roberts

He has been taken up to heaven
and he will fall in love there
because the brickwork is sooted,
splashy with lichen, undisturbed
by her scraping, her Weedol drench.
There, his path to paradise winds,
not ram-rod straight,
not spread with Wiltshire Times
so he has to plant his shoes, dirtied,
ordinary, on the faces of those
who have recently married...

Not crackling to heaven’s doorstep,
the floor of Elysium will be scuffed,
in sore need of a mop.
He’ll find it chilly, freshened,
lacking the heart he’s used to,
the all-year immolation
in the kitchen corner,
her squat beloved Rayburn,
its ready embrace of every form of refuse.

Not scatter cushions, not armcovers,
but a television too loud,
the remote kicked under the sofa
by sloppy, slippered angels,
windows finger-printed,
blurring the shaggy garden,

the merry.-go-round a disgrace
of three day old washing
and there, in the arbour
he built for her one summer,
he will find her, feet up at last,
sharp and fierce as she has always been,
but so at ease with her orderliness
that if she insists, and she will,
he will not want to war with her again.

 

Martyn Crucefix’s latest collection, A Madder Ghost (Enitharmon) was published in 1997. A founder member of the poetry performance group ShadoWork, he has won major prizes in leading poetry competitions as well as a Gregory award and a Hawthornden Fellowship.

Page(s) 59

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