Flickering

Flickering

 

Weather incomprehensible
the images uncontrollable:
parched gardens; wooden fences;
sprinklers; fluorescent grills off the A1.
The Longship, Stevenage New Town,
orange downlight on late diners in
contentment. A mosaic of Vikings.

A new town here was planned
for things no one understood.
Who’d have known it would
stay in my memory, resurface
in safe chlorine of a pool and
seats for bored parents who
sat exhausted but devoted.

I’m searching images online.
The wall mural is long gone
and the insane green of 1976
Stanborough lakes, capsizing
to cool off. I’m sure things are
smaller now, nothing enormous –
details go, with no aggregates.

How painful people are.
What else have we got.
I love children, so direct,
but the vagueness of adult
intrigues, for what? Paper-thin
glories; identities for mushrooms;
applications to make non-entities.

You’re found
sitting it out
in a cupboard.
A diagram,
an overhead –
there you are,
blank or dead.

 

Paul Sutton
illustration Nick Victor


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