For The Grenville Tower Fire

Anthony Leatham

3 July · 

Dust to dust
Ashes to ashes
In the wind we all
Whistle the same.

Meriem in her party dress
Dancing round the table
On the 21st Floor

Soul to soul
Reed to Reed
In the wind we all
Whistle the same

Mohamed at his PlayStation
His brother in the other room
On his computer
Chatting with his friends

Babel to Babel
Tower to tower
In the wind we all
Whistle the same

Mother Indira
Lady Fulani
On the 16th and 17th Floor
Jostling lives that matter 200feet high

Skin to skin
Bone to bone
In the wind we all
Whistle the same

Zainab fled war
To this safe haven
Trapped in Fate's wicked twist
On the 10th Floor

Voice to voice
Breathe to breathe
In the wind we all
Whistle the same

There is a place
Where they have gone
Each to his and her
Own heaven

Soul to soul
Reed to Reed
In the wind we all
Whistle the same.

Tom

You've never seen a man who works as hard as Tom
Everything for his wife and children
All the time out wheeling and dealing
You've never seen a man who works as hard as Tom

You've never seen a man own as little as Tom
Time-poor, space-poor
His things'd fit in two plastic bags
The wife and kids don't say hello
Out spending, in texting
You've never seen a man own as little as Tom

Tom was a good man
But always people-pleasing
Indeed his mother's son and his father's little soldier
Don't know how he ended up in this situation
Didn't question how, never questions why

You've never seen a man crack open wide as Tom
Fallen from his manly pride
His 'mirror cracked from side to side'
Tom's breaking soul unnoticed by
His own kids and his own wife
You've never seen a man crack open wide as Tom

You've never seen a man provide as much as Tom
All those holidays and clothes and house for his beloved bride
For her he worked himself into an early grave
She asked what the insurance was
In her husband's name
And if the standard of her life
Would be the same or change
You've never seen a man provide as much as Tom

You've never seen a man so soon forgotten as Tom
His colleagues did not attend his funeral or the wake
Neither did his wife and children, off in Saint Tropez
His father stroked his trophy wife
His mother fixed her golf-Course smile
Said, " Don't worry, dear, we have another good hardworking child."
You've never seen a man as soon forgotten as Tom

Heads Head Down To The Bunker

Heads head down to the bunker
Arms hang akimbo
Minds gone awry
Feet do what feet do
Standing still they shuffle
When no-one among the Generals
Can answer why.
Voices voicing silence
Courage fails where morality
Poses the great questions
And heads head down to the bunker
To await the unleashing of terror
Unleashed by embarrassed dogs of war.

Ragnarok

Know this
The armies that you raise
Are but nothing to
One brand of fire
Brighter than any sun
You have created this
Hell, with your own hands
One outnumbering
Millions

Whale

Rusted, beached
Corruscated, tipped
Spilled, eventre (gutted)
Wet pebble-rattled
Receding tides do not alter
In any beautiful way
This monument to our greed.

Ropes, cannisters and bobbins
Plastic blue plastic
Canary yellow
This in no way seems probable
From the distant arrangements of shelves
To this poor rubble of beached bathers.

And heaviest of all
The stinking rotting hill
Of flesh
Stuffed like Christmas
With landfill
Our Landfill.

The whale
From what gyratory mixture
Did this Mother and
World-Seer sip
Maybe this is her sacrifice
But this is our vanity
In her, or shame.

Twisted, broken, bloated
Between the landfill shame
And sea of tide
Wet rattles the pebbles
Skerries of the hoard of words
That lie like engorged
And drowned Odysseus
World recorder
Witness...Chronicler
Chronicle..Chronicler
What have we done.

The Anchor And The Chain

Let clod feet mire in mud
As old ideas of old men;
Whose dying breath calls out
For pity

I have been a sorry fool
Who, in life, took vindictiveness
And hate for others to new heights
And lows.

It is the Anchor and the Chain
Like fetters, drew me down
Into the murky depths
Of prejudice.

Whereof my sense of self superior?
When you, my African nurse
Are last to witness me in illness
And isolation.

You draw the blanket to my chin
And with kind dark eyes say,
"There, there", and, as patiently,
Hear my confession.

They're Dragging Out The Crown And Sceptre

'The Tory party is stuck in a post-colonial delusion'. Labour conference 2017

They're dragging out
The crown and sceptre
They've scheduled daily
The mitre and the ball
The House of Plantagenet, Tudor, Saxe-Coburg and Windsor
Is a diurnal TV staple
To keep the British buoyed up
As we fall.

They're schlepping out
The dusty purple
Reaching down the National sofa
They're scraping British history's barrel
For glory days of imperial rule;
If anything, the royals remind us
That we're bloody-minded
And bloody cruel.

Death Of The Speaking Clock

The Death of the Speaking Clock

Time ticked slowly for the man who
Once was the voice of the Speaking Clock.
Aged eighty-seven, he lay dying in a four-poster bed
With no one but an avaricious sister waiting
For his last breath and inheritance.
His breathe fetid where precision RP used to be.
“I knew Gieldgud...the plays...the parties...has anyone called?”.
“At the third stroke it will be...”

The basso profundo redundant, decades now;
Replaced by youth, though recorded in his youth
His was the voice of an aging and dying generation.
“At the third stroke it will be...”

In a darkening Brighton apartment, “Is my name in the Times?”
He rasped, “The Birthday section?”.
The sister’s fingers froze around a gold watch
“Yes, it was placed last week”.
She lied; he sighed deeply.
She neither cared and had forgotten
As would The Times.
No one came to the door of the man
Who once was the voice of the Speaking Clock
“At the third stroke it will be five, twenty-four and twenty seconds....”