for Patricia Ware
First disappointments
disappear with words – people
or changes that found you out:
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the kind one ready with the jar of
iodine
or the menace of a grey mid-morning
quartered by windows.
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Were there instructions
on how to fill the graph paper?
Where do you draw the line?
At the back of the reflected classroom
water bounces out of a pipe.
The caretaker’s daughter becomes
a nurse, and the nurse grows
golden marrows on her allotment.
Timetables arrive in different inks.
The key can be looked at later
when you’ve had a wash.
No sense of urgency prevails
for all the suffering – great loves
push a mop along the corridor
without windows, without a second
thought given to appearances.
Will Eaves is a poet and novelist. His most recent book is “Broken Consort” (CB Editions)
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This article appears in the 16 Aug 2023 issue of the New Statesman, Russia’s War on the Future