From a Weekend First

Paul Farley

One for the money. Arrangements in green and grey

from the window of an empty dining-car.

No takers for this Burgundy today

apart from me. I'll raise a weighted stem

to my homeland scattering by, be grateful for

these easy-on-the-eye, Army & Navy

surplus camouflage（伪装） colours that seem

to mask all trace of life and industry;

a draft for the hidden dead, our forefathers,

the landfills of the mind where they turned in

with the plush（豪华的） and orange peel of yesteryear（不久以前）,

used up and entertained and put to bed

at last; to this view where everything seems to turn

on the middle distance. Crematoria, multiplex

way stations in the form of big sheds

that house their promises of goods and sex;

to the promise of a university town,

its spires and playing fields. No border guards

will board at this station, no shakedown

relieve me of papers or contraband（走私货）:

this is England. Nobody will pull the cord

on these thoughts, though the cutlery and glasses

set for dinner are tinkling at a bend,

a carriage full of ghosts taking their places.

Now drink to slow outskirts, the colour wheels

of fifty years collected in windows;

to worlds of interiors, to credit deals

with nothing to pay until next year, postcodes

where water hardens, then softens, where rows

of streetlights become the dominant motif

as day drains, and I see myself transposed

into the dark, lifting my glass. Belief

is one thing, though the dead have none of it.

What would they make of me? This pinot noir

on my expenses, time enough to write

this on a Virgin antimacassar --

the miles of feint, the months of Sunday school,

the gallons of free milk, all led to here:

an empty dining-car, a single fool

reflected endlessly on the night air.