each morning the walk beyond the workmen
as they line up to change crouch down as though
they are swimmers and the kerb is the edge
of the ocean slipping off pumps lacing up boots
sometimes it’s jogging bottoms shimmied down
replaced by practical canvas things not clothing
but protection and always already
the high-vis illuminated by their own headlights
and beyond them and beyond the train depot
they service every day where single carriages
lay like dormant cattle behind fences
the stucco of the terraces is cracked
so the sides of the houses have branches
and the Railway Hotel is no longer
near a railway and has no beds to speak of
though through the empty ringpull of net-curtain
there is a tinfoil glint of Christmas
and as the day breaks itself apart on the floor
the hatched egg of an upturned hardhat
Andrew McMillan is a poet based in Manchester. His debut “Physical” was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. This poem is an extract from “uncivil”, which will appear in McMillan’s third collection, Pandemonium (Jonathan Cape), on 20 May.
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This article appears in the 05 May 2021 issue of the New Statesman, If not now, when?