We’re in The Engineer. Rehearsing.
Bob calls it that. Bill is showing me
the LOVE and HATE across his knuckles – an earlier biker
life he is now outdistancing. I couldn’t figure how
he and Cobbing were on the same plane but
they were splatter slip two of them
soaring in the back pew at Michaelmas evensong
the airy space thick with their rattling verbal rip
Over the road at the LMC refurbished
British Rail Staff Club beside the Regent Canal
we perform what we’ve rehearsed
our mass outnumbering those come to listen.
Burwell on doppler-phone the rest of us on voice.
The score is on a straggle of A4 mimeograph
on the floor in our hands in the air.
Last month at a pub in Oxford Bob taught
me how to perform the wall when lost or separated
from the poem’s text by hustling drunks.
Find a mark
hold it, think it, bend it. You’ll get there.
Peter Finch