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The Professor’s
Very Words
Crouched by the bins on a winter’s day
in my old dungarees, a bloke in rags,
I was scraping the dried paint from a tray
like something out of Beckett.
Wipe tools, clean up, use the outside tap.
It is demeaning work looked at like that
beside a polished toecap, a buttoned coat,
but salutary, surely
this dusty grey face blinking in the open,
a rabbit at work away from the warren;
passers-by are startled, perhaps outraged
to see someone so exposed on the road.
You whistle, you sing, you get along.
Be home by dark tonight if you’re lucky.
Escape from Colditz
(Volatile Organic Compounds)
I’m on the high ladder, under the eaves,
up close to the VOCs.
Bucket on a hook, brush on a stick,
things forgotten I won’t go down for.
Open the gloss with a house key,
ungum the nozzle of the glue gun
with a paperclip from deep in my pocket.
This improvisation’s old hat for me,
like dreamed-of bids for freedom from school,
sheets slung over the castle wall,
tunnelling with a teaspoon, trousers for bags,
losing the spoil round the exercise yard;
and wildest plan of all to build a plane,
a glider out of cardboard, matchwood, glue,
launch it from the clock tower
for the midnight flight home.
Up here I can see the end of the tunnel.
I’ve got the last nail between my teeth
ready to tap in and lightly pin the final piece.
Lean out, trapezist, bring on the Gripfix.
Old No. 28 Bathroom
We painted it through in oil eggshell,
a pale creamy yellow, and had to leave
the thunderous fume-filled room, to smoke.
Father and son, we stuffed our pipes,
lived in a cloud through the tea break.
Kidding ourselves we puffed away,
painting-in the kinked, ballooning lead pipes,
insides coated with limescale, probably.
The baccy made you feel better.
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