| Saturday, November 27, 2004 |
 | Barlock
'. . . you can't think,' she was saying, 'beyond the next.
We were underground, closed-out, we'd slammed the hatch,
the two of us, him wearing everything from his stickpin to his Rolex,
me dressed to kill. The first fast batch
showed as lights over the mountains. We barely had time to catch
our breath or point before they sewed a chainstitch
across Katchukama Square and down the Street of Locks.
That's when we went to the cellar: to cobwebs on bare bricks,
a tin trunk, a rusty Barlock, empty wine-racks,
pictures in busted frames, a doll's house, Meccano, Airfix,
all the old stuff, history in a box . . .
I had plaster in my hair that made my whole scalp itch,
he looked like hell, lip bitten-through, a raw patch
on the heel of his hand from hammering home the latch.
For an hour or more we could hear the phone and the fax
cross-ringing upstairs: that, and the chiming of clocks
with the incoming overlapping. I made a bed of sacks
and lay down with him, my hand tucked tight between his legs.
I dozed and dreamed of our place in the south, the beach,
the dunes and pines, the walk between rocks
that took us to the village, no more, really, than a few shacks,
a taxi rank, a bar, where he liked to hang out with the jocks, the jacks
of all trades, patriots, punks, argufiers, the one-time rich,
two-timers, time-servers: salt of the earth, he'd say. I said the dregs.'
David Harsent
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