Anthony Wilson poems

On Speaking to One Another from Different Rooms

Distorted and lingering, ‘Ant!, Dad!, Tats!’
grown interchangeable, explosive,
each sounding furious.
A search for keys in one room
nourishes fear of lateness in another.
From a kettle filled and boiling
to the weather, daily noise is damned
for drowning the needs of now!
My reply is weapon and filibuster,
deliberate sotto voce, below war level,
another trait of my father
I will never perfect:
I’m here, Can’t hear you, What is it?,
screaming inside ‘Who died?’
Because everything is not where we left it
history will revisit us tomorrow
at approximately the same time.
The door is almost closed
and we have not said our goodbyes yet.

by Anthony Wilson

Borderline
      for and after Lawrence Sail
      the sump-life of the place – Seamus Heaney

These are the flatlands
stitched between flood-plain and ditch,

everything provisional,
ooze and sluice.

The estuary looks walkable,
spines of red clay

rising from slate water
with flanks of weeping slip

which shimmer mother-of-pearl,
silver, molten.

A powerboat that was toy
bounces through its roar,

its wake slapping
the cledge, scattering wagtails.

The stranded barge
of The Turf breathes easy,

its spur both tongue
and poop-deck.

Beyond, a train
becomes its horn;

skeletal willows inch greener;
and an oarsman

pushes himself backwards
into the future.

(from Riddance)