Bury Market for a great day out
There are hearts on the block here, kidneys trotters
and tripe splayed pungent and silvery slick. The blood
of a thousand black puddings runs dry as old eyes.
Violet remembers she used to prefer a bite of offal fried
but avoids the butcher’s eye, passes his counter snail-slow
heads to the farthest café for quality coffee one pound
a mug. Sits like a toff with a drink made for once
by somebody else, handbag clutched in her lap.
A syrup of seventies hits drips from somewhere
above her pill-box hat bought in a BHS sale.
She is washed in a cappuccino fugue, removed
and released from the gaze of sideboard ghosts.
On meeting a nuclear scientist in Moscow, 1985
Don’t think you will ever be safe again he said
in a room on a white street in whispers because
of the bugs. He knew the odds, was at risk
for speaking into a microphone.
After the Wall, he flew to a MidWest college
and most of us resumed business, ignored
the primped missiles waiting in silos
for the day when talking stops.
Forgetting was always the healthy option.
At ten, I found my mother’s uniform
of prickly serge that she wore in the secret
bunker down by the sewage works.
Once, against all rules, she took me in
through blast-proof doors to see the board
where she would plot the bomber’s
course towards our roofs and fields.
The mechanism of war unrolled before
my eyes beneath rich Lancashire soil
by the B-road where a purple bus
had carried us on seaside trips.
Bunkers are locked, weep damp. Children
dream of other hurt to come. Warheads wait
for their moment, a second sun. Don’t think
you will ever be safe again, he said.
Flight of the dragonfly 