St Edmunds

I have washed downstairs in
a cold, functional corridor — the wash block.
And now I am permitted to walk around with only a jacket
to cover the nakedness of my chest.

Soon, I will know that tiny moment when the body is confused between pain and ecstasy.
I have been talking or eating
in those areas where talking and eating are offences punishable by caning.
I watch from a distance I have discovered inside myself.

At night,
the Devil walks the corridors of this place,
A huge black insect
given substance from the sweated essence
of each boy’s secret anguish.

He is looking for
someone whose eyes will widen at His darkness.
Some boy who is still small, not yet cold and closed.
He will lie on top of the young body, sucking into himself.
While the boy tries,
until the last moment, to hold his mouth up where the air is.

In the morning,
the bell will sound loudly
next to any sleeping heads that have not already been called to prayer
and we will pretend not to notice the empty bed.


Jim Conwell (UK)

Canal

I remember all sorts of things, that’s the problem. They all lie like objects you wouldn’t want to touch, on the surface of a scummy canal. Take one up and you’ll find that only a bit of it is visible amongst all the other dirt. The rest lies below the surface, out of sight in the murk where nothing can live anyway. In some places the water has backed up and looks like old, thick skin, as if some elephant met his end there and this is all that remains of him. It’s orange from the bacteria that feed off it. On cold nights, you can see the mist rising. Not like normal calm hovering but like it’s being spat out from underneath.

Take this here for example. A fragment of something. Could be an old photograph printed on glass. Is that someone’s eye looking at us now, looking across some medium I cannot name. Time maybe, whatever that really is. Careful now, it’s sharp. One day, they will come and clean the canal, drag it all into dirty, rusting barges and, since no one is going to take on the job of sorting that lot, they’ll bury it. In a licensed hole somewhere. Dump it and then push the earth back on top with a heavy machine that breathes out thick, black smoke when it gathers itself to move. The water will be clean then, free of history and ready for the holidaymakers’ boats.

Jim Conwell (UK)

It is dark here

It is dark here in my room now
under the clouds.
Outside, a wall of quiet sound stands off
and more acutely,
nearer-by,
large liquid ruptures sound
that have escaped the holes in the gutter joints
and meet the shock of the ground.

It becomes darker still
but the sky holds its tongue,
saving the best for somewhere else.
I am, as usual,
filled with sadness that I refuse to call grief,
even though I walk with it hand in hand
through every day,
sometimes exchanging not one word.


Jim Conwell (UK)