Empire
by Michael Brown
Laugh all you like but I’m the type of guy
who’ll derive an exquisite bliss
from the wild rage of rain, listen
half-asleep to its squall of mild peril
clamouring outside my castellated walls.
It can’t get in to attack the protected king
who — let’s face it — in another life
I might have been. Think of it
battering the inadequate plastic of the annexe
jam-packed with your potted geraniums.
Imagine the allotment dog-fox gone to earth
behind the half-closed curtains, the broken
guttering, that metal bucket brimming
the cosmos of our loft. Dream of womb-sound
and water and mud and the apple tree we dug
deep rooted in the back garden when we were young.
And at the front —the flood, the waterlogged
free-floating street I strutted once,
the drowned chassis of the neighbour’s car.
Blind trust, or luck, perhaps, to wake
to this, safe from that, and nothing harmed.
who’ll derive an exquisite bliss
from the wild rage of rain, listen
half-asleep to its squall of mild peril
clamouring outside my castellated walls.
It can’t get in to attack the protected king
who — let’s face it — in another life
I might have been. Think of it
battering the inadequate plastic of the annexe
jam-packed with your potted geraniums.
Imagine the allotment dog-fox gone to earth
behind the half-closed curtains, the broken
guttering, that metal bucket brimming
the cosmos of our loft. Dream of womb-sound
and water and mud and the apple tree we dug
deep rooted in the back garden when we were young.
And at the front —the flood, the waterlogged
free-floating street I strutted once,
the drowned chassis of the neighbour’s car.
Blind trust, or luck, perhaps, to wake
to this, safe from that, and nothing harmed.