Friday, October 5, 2018

Christopher Hopkins writes


Palsy dreaming

Your invented life
never came back home.
The front door still open
to your little refugees. 

The chapel’s stone, now colder.
The hall is black, like the wet slate roof.
The floorboard’s worn fibre,
the only record of heydays gone,
of standing room only. 

The walk to school was only up the hill.
Learnt the poetry in pierced sides,
the heart and blood in rhythm and rhyme.
The majesty all held up
by the stenciled columns.

Then the truth was bewoke aloud
by the grey pin suited master himself.
Even drunks stopped to listen,
baptised by his spit.

When new college came, 
it took the best, and with it 
the anaemic breath of a town.
Bramble grew fast and thick,
while decisions hung like washing lines.

They’ll never come back.
They have their own lives now.
Away from this palsy dreaming.
 Image result for ruined school paintings
 Lucile in ruined school -- Leonardi Manuel

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