We’ve gone inside with the bluebells, literary bluebells
naturally. I am in your shirt pocket, where I always
wanted to be. New Order plays somewhere outside but
it’s borderline dance music for me, and I freeze, and –
from inside your pocket – put the water in with the tea
And what the lover did to the mower, I do to Fiat’s
workers in Turin
Perhaps however that’s another me, another blow-in
consultant, another bird on another wind. Two of us
playing discus, eating biscuits, a musical two obviously
And what Fiat in Turin did to its workers, you do to my
thoughts and me
Inside the yard, but outside Italy. Grass tips in your hair
like a mower’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ under the noise, as
dandelion and co appear to be destroyed. Haha laughs a
fictional rat, did you get that? Like a poet need record an
execution for a general reader’s thrills. Two of us in the
mailbox, getting snailed on. Not the same two, logically
And what grass seeds did to the mower’s lungs I do to the
workers of Fiat in Turin
Poems go into and out of minds. Think of Tennyson in
the mind of Roger Casement. Think of the same poem in
the mind of Queen Victoria at the same time. Two of us
in the basement but never mind that. Superfluous rhymes
were a thing of the time. Critics disagree on Wordsworth
all the time. I spend my time looking for someone while
at home, while someone else is looking for home. They
could be on their way there. Lighten up. The Fiat workers
will all be dead soon. The factory managers too. Shine a
light on the way terrorism was used as an excuse to
dismantle a workforce. Two of us printing t-shirts. Think
of John Lennon living long enough to read Simon Jarvis
And what the mower did to the dandelion and the
dandelion’s friends, I do to the thoughts of the Fiat
workers in Turin
Or to listen to New Order, collaborate with New Order or
read Ricks on Larkin in the New York Review of Books
he did live long enough for that but, who knows, did he?
What Stevie Smith did for waving, what Fiat in Turin did
for Italian workplace relations, what Juliana did for the
mower and his thoughts, for Marvell and his future
availability, you, and the light of the future, which no
shade can hope to alleviate, do to the two of us, and to
adjust, to me
Read the rest of Overland 229
If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue
