KEN BOLTON + JOHN JENKINS
Sample poem
THE GOD OF TRIESTE, AREZZO, ADELAIDE, PISA,
LEIPZIG AND OTHER SMALLER CITIES LOOKS DOWN
Sometimes I look out on all the hopeless crud
that's going down in this town
and watch the small figures walk below,
about their business
- which is only penny ante
according to some god-like position, which,
admittedly, is literally mine.
But it's best to get some perspective on this -
it's only a little town, Trieste (so are
Arezzo and Adelaide, and Leipzig - the towns
I look after). A figure
wanders by the river, head in the clouds
daydreaming and I feel 'fond', maybe, but not
involved
and I do not watch its progress. But the figure,
her shoulders forward, walking too quickly,
and absorbedly, by that same river -
the Arno if it is Pisa, the Torrens if Adelaide
then I care. Her trouble seems so great,
unknown to me, and the setting
too ridiculous, too kooky
as backdrop - for any human drama.
But they can't see this.
I, of course, can't see it from their perspective!
Down amongst it, surrounded
by it, the river seems real enough; tears
blurring the ridiculous architecture. It's
this mystery I cannot know:
her so evident suffering, his agony of indecision,
sense of worthlessness, the child's despair
and resignation, and its miniature quality,
that blinds the tiny figure
to the bland but amusing beauties of the city.
I do not understand how they feel -
What troubles them?
The serene, the
happy, the delirious figure
sees things as I do: small, the city about them
provides security, is niche, is bower, is a pedestal perhaps,
a dispensation.
I see them the same way.
Of course I cannot see myself.
I am aware of myself - true - but not so that I gain
or attain, if even only briefly, higher ground:
I am up here looking down. I know
that I am happy and involved in the lives below,
my city, when the traffic flows and the day goes on
and small figures here and there are preoccupied
in their Lilliputian
but dear way. Their emotions colour the city.
The distressed rider - curious statue
outside their parliament - seems tragic,
emblem of the heightened state they feel, and its inadequacy
gives a kind of pathos: the buses
with their red noses on 'Red Nose Day' for instance -
bathetic. And I care more than I can say
and can do nothing. It is my all day study
and my midnight dream, to see that same figure emerge
and to follow it the next day, sadly weaving through
the streets,
carrying, trailing its troubles. Are they the same?
Worse, or different? What will make them 'go away'?
Or I am bored - I am not needed here,
no one is troubled, things run smoothly. The town
is only a town, people have their place in it.
What am I doing up here in these spires, the traffic going by
soundlessly almost? I am bored.
But take that man opening up that bar-and-pizzeria -
I have seen him before. He is troubled. What
ails him? See how he pauses with the key?
And then he opens it! Finally. And at
the same bar - which looks pleasant enough
(he is switching on the neon sign now - see, it
flickers a little faultily most nights, for the first few hours,
a beautiful green and red and blue and white that I think
was once yellow but has faded) -- the young woman,
here she comes now, she always comes at just this time,
is strangely troubled too. She has been for days. I cannot
get over it.
Oh, these dreadful pigeons!
Where is the life for me, that I can worry about?
Why don't the mountains beckon, the distant hills,
they should, but they never do.