I like this, Lawrence. It's spatially taut, solid and smart - the way, from
another perspective, I like Andrew Burke's piece end-up with the washing
machine and the boys. A clarity achieved by stilling both the image and the
poem.
Something I like in Lorca's still lifes and early Charles Simic - before he
began- it seems to me - writing parodies of his work ad infinitum.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> The back of a bus
>
> One man, alone; and, behind and around,
> a jagged curve of five. All are in middle age:
> we are looking at the back of a bus. Noisy and full.
>
> None of them is really smart. But some look clean;
> and some have costly clothes quite rumpled.
> Each is at some distance from looking good.
>
> The one and the five are not all together.
> The five, unrulily jolly, sprawling and facetious,
> one-upping each other spatially and with gesture;
>
> the solitary man, like a worm repulsed by heat,
> recoils from stale clothes borne tobacco smoke
> in a closed warm container full of bad breath.
>
> It's not important. Camaraderie of ritualised aggression
> keeps the curve constant, and the one apart.
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