Jeremy Page

Lewes, East Sussex, UK

 

Jeremy Page has published several collections of poems, among them In and Out of the Dark Wood (HappenStance, 2010) and Closing Time (Pindrop, 2014), and translations of Catullus, Leopardi, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Boris Vian. His novella London Calling was published by Cultured Llama in 2018. He is the founding editor of The Frogmore Papers.

 

 

 Poem written 22nd April 2020

 

INTERESTING TIMES

after Confucius

Do you remember when people materialised on doorsteps,

clanged saucepans and clapped as if their lives depended

every Thursday evening when the clock struck eight?

And the sun shone day after day when all there’d been for months

was rain of every kind, drizzle, hail, the sort that smacks windows

and leaves gardens spongey underfoot, and there was suddenly

so much less to do, unless you were essential, and one day

dissolved into the next, and time became a stative verb,

and in the streets people decided whether or not to greet

the advancing stranger, but gave the widest possible berth anyway,

exchanging looks that saved them oh so many words,

and neighbours hollered cordially across the garden fence?

 

And if you listened to the news you’d learn that only one thing

was happening, because all the rest of life had paused

and every night you’d have the weirdest dreams, as if

plague drip-fed your unconscious all day, stirring the pot the while?

It was the strangest of times. The toll was heavy.