Jamie Grant: Two Poems

Climate Change

 

Rain rushing over roof tiles,

lush grass in the lane, loose smiles

on the faces of farmers and gardeners

in places where former hardness

gains the texture of fruit jelly;

rain that soaks the roots of every

growing crop and vine, that falls

in a slow line from the top of walls,

 

that lets life be restored.

Yet what lines are overheard

in shopping centres and offices

except for complaints that the professors

at the Bureau got their forecast wrong

again, women anxious, for their long

preserved permanent hairstyle

cannot afford a drenching, while

 

businessmen in new shoes

step around puddles, annoyed and bemused.

A drought is broken, and everyone wants

to complain. Overflowing fonts

at baptisms, and dams breaking

their banks, flooded towns waking

to a vista of lakes; yet those

who only days ago made public shows

 

of sorrow over the starving sheep

and dust-filled fields are those who weep

now for the people stranded on roof

tops; only a few remain aloof

from it all, and wait for the day

to end. Rainbows arch like a spray

of flowers over a radar screen

where a forecaster works, unseen

 

by those who rely on and resent

the inefficient instrument

that cannot always foretell change

of climate or of weather.

More storm clouds gather

beyond the ancient mountain range.

The rain falls in a slow translucent veil.

Vendors offer umbrellas for sale.

Jamie Grant

 

Emergency Flight

 

An uncomfortable bed

that folds like a seat

in business class

on an airliner:

I lie under a sheet

 

and listen to the airconditioner,

its ceaseless mechanical roar

like the engines

of a jet.

A nurse comes to the door

 

and I am almost convinced

of being on a flight

to a distant land,

while that is no nurse

but an attendant who might

 

offer drinks or duty-free goods.

Another passenger is coughing

somewhere unseen

in the dark

cabin. One must think nothing

 

about the destination.

Instead, imagine boarding an aeroplane,

entering an upholstered

tunnel to settle

into softness while the engines strain

 

and heighten their pitch outside—

inside, that mounting pitch can be sensed

within each body

before the climax

of flight, all muscles tensed

 

until roads tilt within the window frame …

Yet this place has no windows,

and the bed moves out

of the room

on wheels, to pass by doors in rows

 

on the way to a sterile location.

One is tied to a board

as if by an interrogator

for the CIA,

and methodically tortured

 

with needles, cords and plastic

tubes. Ten minutes seem to pass.

Nurses and technicians

hold conversations

that go over one’s head, like class

 

discussions half-missed by a latecomer.

Then the torturer’s board is wheeled back

to where it came

from, and somehow

it emerges that those minutes took two hours. Black

 

tea is served, along with

a newspaper, but the names

of the figures

mentioned in the news

seem unfamiliar and wrong, like claims

 

of kinship from strangers. A half hour

passes, and the paper begins to make sense.

Cables, cuffs and wires

act as restraints

like the guy ropes of tents,

 

and my body is connected to a monitor

that emits the same warning

signal as a truck

going into reverse.

Night time follows, and morning,

 

and another night, and this body remains

in captivity, plotting an escape: if that tube

could be unhooked

and the gown

left sprawled on the bed, cool as an ice-cube

 

I would evade the guards in nurse’s

uniform and hide in the grounds …

But instead news comes

to the effect

that release is imminent. Sounds

 

from the monitors are brusquely switched

off. At the desk one checks out like a guest

leaving a hotel. The air outside

feels like freedom,

until the doctor calls for another test.

 

Jamie Grant