Three Poems About People by Edwin Morgan

Three Poems about people by Edwin Morgan

In the Snack-bar

• Trio
• Good Friday

In the Snack-bar

1. A cup capsizes along the formica,
2. slithering with a dull clatter.
3. A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack-bar.
4. An old man is trying to get to his feet
5. from the low round stool fixed to the floor.
6. Slowly he levers himself up, his hands have no power.
7. He is up as far as he can get. The dismal hump
8. looming over him forces his head down.
9. He stands in his stained beltless gaberdine
10. like a monstrous animal caught in a tent
11. in some story. He sways slightly,
12. the face not seen, bent down
13. in shadow under his cap.
14. Even on his feet he is staring at the floor
15. or would be, if he could see.
16. I notice now his stick, once painted white
17. but scuffed and muddy, hanging from his right arm.
18. Long blind, hunchback born, half paralysed
19. he stands
20. fumbling with the stick
21. and speaks:
22. ‘I want – to go to the – toilet.’

1. It is down two flights of stairs, but we go.
2. I take his arm. ‘Give me – your arm – it’s better,’ he says.
3. Inch by inch we drift towards the stairs.
4. A few yards of floor are like a landscape
5. to be negotiated, in the slow setting out
6. time has almost stopped. I concentrate
7. my life to his: crunch of spilt sugar,
8. slidy puddle from the night’s umbrellas,
9. table edges, people’s feet,
10. hiss of the coffee-machine, voices and laughter,
11. smell of a cigar, hamburgers, wet coats steaming,
12. and the slow dangerous inches to the stairs.
13. I put his right hand on the rail
14. and take his stick. He clings to me. The stick
15. is in his left hand, probing the treads.
16. I guide his arm and tell him the steps.
17. And slowly we go down. And slowly we go down.
18. White tiles and mirrors at last. He shambles
19. uncouth into the clinical gleam.
20. I set him in position, stand behind him
21. and wait with his stick.
22. His brooding reflection darkens the mirror
23. but the trickle of his water is thin and slow,
24. an old man’s apology for living.
25. Painful ages to close his trousers and coat –
26. I do up the last buttons for him.
27. He asks doubtfully, ‘Can I – wash my hands?’
28. I fill the basin, clasp his soft fingers round the soap.
29. He washes, feebly, patiently. There is no towel.
30. I press the pedal of the drier, draw his hands
31. gently into the roar of the hot air.
32. But he cannot rub them together,
33. drags out a handkerchief to finish.
34. He is glad to leave the contraption, and face the stairs.
35. He climbs, and steadily enough.
36. He climbs, we climb. He climbs
37. with many pauses but with that one
38. persisting patience of the undefeated
39. which is the nature of man when all is said.
40. And slowly we go up. And slowly we go up.
41. The faltering, unfaltering steps
42. take him at last to the door
43. across that endless, yet not endless waste of floor.
44. I watch him helped on a bus. It shudders off in the rain.

1. The conductor bends to hear where he wants to go.
2. Wherever he could go it would be dark
3. and yet he must trust men.
4. Without embarrassment or shame
5. he must announce his most pitiful needs
6. in a public place. No one sees his face.
7. Does he know how frightening he is in his strangeness
8. under his mountainous coat, his hands like wet leaves
9. stuck to the half-white stick?
10. His life depends on many who would evade him.
11. But he cannot reckon up the chances,
12. having one thing to do,
13. to haul his blind hump through these rains of August.
14. Dear Christ, to be born for this!

Trio

1. Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
2. a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
3. The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
4. the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
5. and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
6. And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
7. in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
8. the boy says, ‘Wait till he sees this but!’
9. The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder,
10. the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours in a fresh sweet cake,
11. the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
12. with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
13. Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm 1hihuahua!
14. The vale of tears is powerless before you.
15. Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
16. put paid to fate, it abdicates

under the Christmas lights.

1. Monsters of the year
2. go blank, are scattered back,
3. can’t bear this march of three.

1. - And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
2. (yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
3. the life of men and beasts, and music,
4. laughter ringing them round like a guard)
5. at the end of this winter’s day.

Good Friday

1. Three o’clock. The bus lurches
2. round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –‘
3. he flops beside me – 'right along Bath Street?
4. Oh tha's, tha's all right, see I've
5. got to get some Easter eggs for the kiddies.
6. I’ve had a wee drink, ye understand –
7. ye’ll maybe think it’s a – funny day
8. to be celebrating – well, no, but ye see
9. I wasny working, and I like to celebrate
10. when I’m no working – I don’t say it’s right
11. I'm no saying it's right, ye understand - ye understand?
12. But anyway tha’s the way I look at it –
13. I’m no boring you, eh? – ye see today,
14. take today, I don’t know what today’s in aid of,
15. whether Christ was – crucified or was he –
16. rosefae the dead like, see what I mean?
17. You’re an educatit man, you can tell me –
18. Aye, well. There ye are. It’s been seen
19. time and again, the working man
20. has nae education, he jist canny – jist
21. hasny got it, know what I mean,
22. he’s jistbliddy ignorant – Christ aye,
23. bliddy ignorant. Well –' The bus brakes violently,
24. he lunges for the stair, swings down – off,
25. into the sun for his Easter eggs,
26. on very

nearly

steady

legs.