Poetry and plagues; A Ring a Ring o' Roses ...

The Bus Driver (or the virus bred)

The bus driver drives the bus

round and around his route.

He stops at every stop,

even at request stops,

where he stops without request,

opens the doors, closes the doors,

moves on,

round and around his route;

eight hours a day,

each day, every day

round and around his route.

And no one gets on

and no one gets off.

At lunchtime

he takes a break,

he takes a breather,

carefully unwraps

the foil-wrapped sandwich

his wife has prepared and wrapped

with care: the thin sausage slices

between thin slices

of homemade bread -

ah, the simple pleasures;

and he stares out the front window

of his empty bus,

at the empty streets,

chewing slowly,

chewing it over.

He likes his job:

The routine,

the familiarity of the route,

of the people he sees - they chew the fat,

pass the time of day;

and each day just that bit different,

but reassuringly the same.

And there’s the pension:

Something to look forward to.

At the end of his shift,

he parks up at the terminal,

and he gets off and he goes home,

walking down the empty streets,

past the closed school,

the deserted square,

the shuttered houses,

the blinkered offices,

the idle factories,

the unopened shops,

the forsaken restaurant,

the unpeopled bus stops,

the locked church

(though every day is a Sunday now)

enjoying the unseasonable sun,

the unexpected peace and quiet,

unexamined and knowing nothing,

just being, unessential,

he breathes the air,

just thinking of his dinner –

it’s come to that.

At home,

he kisses his wife,

kisses his kids.

They eat a frugal supper;

he passes the salt,

passes the bread ...

they share a glass of wine.

He says his prayers.

He says goodnight.

He dreams:

There is no air in his bus,

not even enough to scream;

and he is no longer the bus driver,

he’s only a passenger,

the lone passenger,

looking out of the back window

as the bus moves forwards,

and everyone is waving

as he goes round and around the route,

up the hill and down the hill,

to and fro, back and forth,

and everyone is waving

as he goes around, comes around

endlessly 

A comment?

Looking backwards, a poem, a rant

Rant

Hindsight is a curse, heaping its miserable

I-told-you-so crumbs onto the empty platter:

The dry leftovers of an apocryphal life –

An inedible and an immoveable feast,

Beyond the cutlery of invective and prayer.

And what we now know?  The leg irons

Of a slaver’s ship that rub raw at the present;

The back-breaking day after day taking us nowhere

But to the future, with its inevitable failure -

A foresight so cheap it beggars belief.

And what god is this to listen to

Such puling disaffection? Cloth-eared

And cloth-capped, relentlessly pushing his bike

Up the hill so we can freewheel it back

Down into the valley of shadows, jeering.

What a broken toy it is to toy with us so:

The not knowing, then knowing; and how

You have to pass it on, this hand-me down

Life, this second-hand go!  It’s all torn 

And holed! 

                    Yet, it will smother your beauty.

Forgive me,

                      forgive me,

                                           forgive me.    

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