A CITY BESEECHED
by Stanley Borg

How doth the city sit solitary,
that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations,
and princess among the provinces,
how is she become tributary!

Lamentations 1:1

I

The past is your natural colour,
where every street sighs in its corner
and long lives an Empire,
only to shadow it
under dead white towels strung sinewy
from eavesdropping panes,
or drowns it
in curried voices fried with onions.

The morning mist is shaped
by yawning flags flapping at the clouds,
whispering at two young girls,
ten colours in their hair,
joining naked smiles with their long earrings,
while their cheap perfume
creeps through my window

and coughs me up from a night without fags,
crumpled as an old man’s tattoos,
like cold sheets
crying over spilt dreams.

Meanwhile,
Francois Sagan mourns her bonjour and yesterday’s hair,
caught in a comb,
as I dunk my eyes in cold coffee
and run them
one across
three down
the lonely hearts –
beautiful people and beautiful love
beautiful Sunday,
two papers,
no mass.

II

Shiny black morning shoes,
and each afternoon dragging its flip flopped feet,
greying more hair.
He sleeps on her left,
she on his right
in a bed shared for thirty years.
And all their children are asleep,
except one,
hanging suspended to the light cast by a mobile.

Out in the street,
lovers argue
perch and chirp
and never mind,
as the holes in car silencers
scratch the night.

III

I will tell you where to find me,
now that time weighs
like a hangover,
and I pant like a bus in summer.
I’ll be at the Imperial Bar,
staring down some old man’s butt cleavage,
and remembering
how I would wind down the steamed up windows
and the car,
filled up with night.

You’re beautiful,
like a lazy one week’s growth,
long sleeves on the first winter day
and a clock ticking the night
in an open window.

I’m not,
like Saturday shopping in Merchant Street,
or slow Sunday driving.

Only here,
will I open my wrists
like a book which has never been read
and my throat will scream like an island in an empty sea,
leaving my face for dead.

It will be months, or maybe years
before you smell my silence.
Then I’ll know,
as shadows drip by drop,
one cigarette at a time,
that yet again the night arrived before me.

© Stanley Borg
Reproduced with permission

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THINGS STANLEY LIKES:

1. My girlfriend with tousled hair, surprised at waking up and finding me

2. Seeing the things people do while waiting at the traffic lights

3. Every day urbanism, with an occasional break of small Italian villages

4. Beautiful light, such as that cast by an open fridge into a darkened kitchen

5. Sitting and smoking in old bars, watching the old timers with lost-at-sea beards staring at the TV, feeling bad because they don't have a hangover

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THINGS STANLEY HATES:

1. The neighbours on my left

2. The neighbours on my right

3. The neighbours at the back

4. The neighbours in front

5. The conditions I live in

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