Pantomime Wall

This poem is sort of a companion piece to the one I posted yesterday. It was written a month or two later.                                 

                                    PANTOMIME WALL

 

                                    Our garden wall is a slightly unnatural

                                    Mauvey red. It puts me in mind

                                    Of the flats we used to paint with bricks

                                    For the parish pantomine- every brick

                                    The same unweathered, unlichened, unscumbled,

                                    Straight-from-the-paint-box red. The racists

                                    Made me do it. They scrawled our wall

                                    With a hate message in aerosol.

                                    What could I do but paint it out

                                    At once?  I chose the brickiest red

                                    In the cellar. Better a pantomime wall

                                    Than one that 's shouting abuse at the neighbours.

                                    Still I'm sorry to see how our wall

                                    Stands out from the walls to left and right

                                    Which are weathered, lichened. The  whole row

                                    That faces the ginnel is beautiful

                                    With the falling down beauty of age and rot.

Ho Hum

A couple of months ago Joe and Sara stashed a lot of bottom-drawer stuff in our attic.

Yesterday Joe and I fetched it all down again and he went through it and sorted out the few things he wanted to keep and I put everything else in a box for Sara.

It was arranged that she would come over today to pick it up.  Ailz and I  stayed in.  We twiddled our toes. Joe stayed out late to avoid running into her. She didn't show.

I'm not enjoying this.