Axe the China

The goat in the china shop

Self-wounded

Cannot go home

Sees enemies everywhere

But mostly they’ve been dead for years

Limping ganglia, half-baked.

The laughter in the piazza

Fades or suffocates

Bubble and squeak in the cauldron’s simmer

The ways out are limited

The avenues of retreat

Blocked.

Nude by a Vespa, the lady Nostalgia

(Neo-classical garage calendar)

Pales beside a fire-extinguisher

Here at least the streets are half forgotten

Far from the museums of empty respect

Across the river.

Washing hangs over a flood of traffic

A chorus no-one wants in the crave for shelter

We cry out for time turned back

But it lags into the whining din

The haloed buildings avoided in every city

The decrepit family crockery handed down.

Onward among the windmills

No use to complain

Transformed into turbines they might do well

In a half-drowned world

Aeroplanes grounded, roads closed –

All’s well that ends bearably

Here in hope, the siren sounds

Calling the osprey down the estuary

Where quicksand swirls in the tide

By the door from the balcony, take flight

Leave it all behind

Time asleep is time wasted

There is a better world

All’s well that ends bravely.

.

Lawrence Freiesleben

June 2019