|

Silverware and Crow’s Feet

Alex Saynor

Friday, December 4th, 2015

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Managers go. Migrate with phantoms
of the present on staircases in frames.
Who stops on the turn and sees the lifting?
Silverware and crow’s feet.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 People come and go. Hotel rooms,
breakfast, silence in the lift.
Just standing. Black and white pictures,
complicated meanings. We stood

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 and looked, tried to prise a story
from the image, but couldn’t stand
for long enough to be the true eccentric.
Too self-conscious to go to ground

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 and lie on that great underlay
while guests pass, up and down,
and we watch. Just biographer-

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Clough on paper, Shankly writing
with kindness to strangers. Truth
and fiction in the pictures.

© Alex Saynor 2015

Notes

This was influenced, bizarrely perhaps, by black and white pictures on a staircase and the question of how long it’s possible to stand and look at a picture without feeling self-conscious while people pass by.

The excellent biographical works alluded to are ‘Mr Shankly’s Photograph’ by Stephen Kelly and ‘Provided You Don’t Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough’ by Duncan Hamilton.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/silverware-and-crows-feet/