Under the Day

This poem comes from a collection, entitled Creative Accounting, written when the term still had the capacity to amuse or shock. After Enron etc., that's clearly no longer the case, but it still goes some way towards indicating what the poems are up to.

UNDER THE DAY

In the early light of the morning,

for instance, it remained as a wish to be

companionable and was straightaway

erased and there was the pentimento

which was only a come stain on the sheet

fondly ‘remade’ as a model for future

delight-filled emotional hours in the

company, in the company of admiring

stares where you are smaller than,

hiding behind, what is looked at, more

concealed than what is concealed in your

arms, which is merely restless and

anxious to be gone into the dark,

that silvery mind that reflects your

slightest wish and pushes the tentative

on. Into action and the great claims

made for it and pearly days lit from

an almost notional above and, hanging

over that, the pestering and abuse

and the layers of differently coloured

sand in the bottom become oddly

confused as the lowest levels percolate

up, like wanting it hard and often.

And the vigilantes also prefer this hour.