Poetry 23 September 2020 The NS Poem: Five Leaves Left A new poem by Declan Ryan. Getty Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up Drugs began in Aix. Those left who knew him still talk about his hands. The size of them. His stoop in Cambridge in a too-small new-build room; his skin, so white you could see through it, into virginity. They say how he was a machine, of sorts, that the only way to get the Nick Drake guitar sound on record would be to have Nick Drake, on guitar. He could keep it going for hours: those hands again, their power, their command the last of its kind, the dead grip of Empire. Later on, he wouldn’t cut his nails, wash his clothes, but that was down the road, that brand of sadness a hint in the air, like the fate of apples only coming into season that will perish uneaten in their bowl. His voice the sound of goodness in the fruit, of England lurching into colour, the trees of the forest bending their heads like Angels out of Blake; harvest time moving towards him where he stood apart, from the detritus of a life. He didn’t like it at home but couldn’t bear it anywhere else. He was tired. He hung a future on the stopped cogs of his alarm clock, then slept through it. Declan Ryan was born in Mayo, Ireland, and lives in London. His most recent pamphlet is "Fighters, Losers" (New Walk Editions). › Why David Fincher’s slick thriller Gone Girl is also one of the great romcoms This article appears in the 25 September 2020 issue of the New Statesman, The autumn of discontent