It might try me accidentally to forget And just lullaby to sleep, Soothed by soft-words-of-mother, Not to cry because it’s too sad, and if All the noise kept carefully out By, for example, newly fitted double glazing, And who made that anyway? And where did they get stuff to make it? And whose bodies are buried inside white plastic? If all the noise, or even just some of it, Were to wake me up, I might never stop crying.
Poor me. It is all about me, isn’t it?
It might try me accidentally to forget And it might succeed a bit and yet Not stop the nightmare that with shrill voice shouts ‘Who built the rotting wooden posts That kept the sea at bay so long That gave you your shelter so that your you Could order fish and chips and play on the slot machines to your dumb numb heart’s content?’ Voice! Voice! Slipping through cracks, falling Through holes in the logic of carefully constructed arguments And dissolving rocks and rotting wooden posts With laughter mocking the idea implicit in so many of our actions That things are just here for our enjoyment, Without context or history, Anaesthetised flesh, Dreaming without knowing the dream is a dream As if I deserved everything Just for being little old me As if I were my own achievement Because I had the money which they invented and then gave themselves And then bought everything which belonged to everyone else And then told everyone else that if they wanted what we had stolen they had to get some money too And that, by the way, we had all the money So wha-tcha-gonna do?
‘So do not forget!’ the voice says ‘As you walk arm in arm with your own skeleton Down the empty beach Listening to the waves crash against the shore, Do not forget that This cliché feels wrong because there’s more To it. The empty beach Is not empty. Do not forget to ask who built the rotting posts. Not forget to ask who saved your soft and porous skin. The empty beach is not empty. The beach is full of everything That it is not Of all the things and people who kindly Are not here Who have withdrawn from view So that you could have this moment walking solitary on the sand And the clothes you are wearing And your bones Do not forget that all of it is on loan Do not forget that, if special, you are so No more than A single grain of sand between your toes Or the person in the crowd you fail to see tonight in the light’s glare’
‘Oh…sorry…hello!’
‘The forgotten but not forgotten The dead but not dead The ones who built the rotting posts.
Do not forget you owe everything to all of them To all of it.
And do not forget to start paying your debts While there’s still time.
Yes To All Of It 