Awaiting Update

We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught
in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait
as he has been waiting these past two years, somewhere
in the heat-bitten brickscapes of London, the memory of him
a hot dance over rooftops, a rustle in the leaves of Powis Square.
The city sings of him.
In the meantime here you are, sat by the window, your head
pressed against glass as if you’re trying to melt out into Didcot
fields, waiting. We cannot update you yet, except to say
that the edge-lands by the line whisper cobwebbed myths,
drowse in September heat. The expectant grass and scrub
brought low last year rises on occulted tongues
into a new skin, like the one you’re growing: soft as rainwater,
resilient as stone.
You will wait here until we know. Until we know something.
Anything. The word on the rail. A sharp cry of metal on metal.
Coffee sours in the cup. It is not the coffee he made,
not a good roast. Think of that as you roast in the carriage,
waiting for news of what may come to unburden you, your father,
the memories, this train, all the people frozen in their seats, dreams
glued to their foreheads like glass. Scared fascists – yet to realise
what they’ve become – walk unsteadily down the railway banks,
assuming they are trees, messiahs, roving balls of light.
Their poor disguises shrivel, heat-struck.
Bewildered, they point at you, caught in your carriage.
Fascist! they cry, Fascist!
over and over until froth flecks their collars and the word
loses meaning, frays into noise. Their tongues, tight as drum-skins,
cannot update you. They do not seem to understand how far
their song has fallen, cannot clean the dirt from their teeth now,
have not seen your father, nor how he floats in the wide mouth of London.
They cannot, will not. His story is wrong to them, corrupted,
so they make noises like cattle lowing in the distance until, at last,
the carriage moves and we know what it was that caused the delay.
A swan on the line.
A swan at Maidenhead, as if it’s taken an unknown path out of Arcadia
or Malory. We cannot update you except to say that you are moving
slowly in the swan’s wake and your father is singing gleefully in the distance,
swan-hissing at trains, at fascists, at the grass as it grows. His ghost-spatter
spreads like paint over London. We cannot update you. You too are a swan.

Adam Horovitz is a writer, performer and teacher who lives in a semi-wild corner of Gloucestershire. He has published three collections of poetry, a memoir and assorted pamphlets. He appeared on Cerys Matthews’ album We Come From the Sun (Decca, 2021). Website:www.adamhorovitz.co.uk