From a Weekend First

From a Weekend First

Paul Farley

One for the money. Arrangements in green and grey 

 from the window of an empty dining-car. 

 No takers for this Burgundy today 

 apart from me. I'll raise a weighted stem 

 to my homeland scattering by, be grateful for 

 these easy-on-the-eye, Army & Navy 

 surplus camouflage（伪装） colours that seem 

 to mask all trace of life and industry; 

a draft for the hidden dead, our forefathers, 

 the landfills of the mind where they turned in 

 with the plush（豪华的） and orange peel of yesteryear（不久以前）, 

 used up and entertained and put to bed 

 at last; to this view where everything seems to turn 

 on the middle distance. Crematoria, multiplex 

 way stations in the form of big sheds 

 that house their promises of goods and sex; 

to the promise of a university town, 

 its spires and playing fields. No border guards 

 will board at this station, no shakedown 

 relieve me of papers or contraband（走私货）: 

 this is England. Nobody will pull the cord 

 on these thoughts, though the cutlery and glasses 

 set for dinner are tinkling at a bend, 

 a carriage full of ghosts taking their places. 

Now drink to slow outskirts, the colour wheels 

 of fifty years collected in windows; 

 to worlds of interiors, to credit deals 

 with nothing to pay until next year, postcodes 

 where water hardens, then softens, where rows 

 of streetlights become the dominant motif 

 as day drains, and I see myself transposed 

 into the dark, lifting my glass. Belief 

is one thing, though the dead have none of it. 

 What would they make of me? This pinot noir 

 on my expenses, time enough to write 

 this on a Virgin antimacassar --

 the miles of feint, the months of Sunday school, 

 the gallons of free milk, all led to here: 

 an empty dining-car, a single fool 

 reflected endlessly on the night air.