Light bends

 

Can you hear that rumbling?

Four in the morning and the boiler’s clearing its throat

Pipes tap-tapping, rapping on old joists

Laddered padding long since worn

Round metal that crosses buried crosses

Beneath well-weathered floorboards

 

Daylight’s been out all night

And now rattles round the window

Stretches itself around the curtains

A vampire victim of the night bus

Stumbling from the electric kick

And jangle noise of an ill-driven milk float

 

First light wants in, begging

And will sing its brightness through tight-shut eyelids

Hoodwink, hook and force you to look

At the room’s mute colours waking up

A bedside book, a half-empty cup

And the shadow of a full ashtray

 

Daybreak bends its rays

Prises open a dusty day

Greedy as a grave-robber at the mouth of a tomb

Crooked beams stir creaking bones

The night’s now stolen - morning owns

All that it covets, all that it exhumes