[James Midgley]

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Rat Lists

Did they wish to be counted? Surely they chose
to burgeon the barrel, to wince from the gutterpipe
which sang in a low tuba note their compressions.
As they gathered they wound tail over tail
and these were not in the end much like worms at all
but squirming corals or the near-luminous
anemones that wriggle beneath undersea rocks
and the rocks of their bodies grew indistinct
and their feet which had been almost human
interlinked like verses and the wearing action
of hearing their names called, like the harsh
erosion of the ocean, rubbed them smooth, hairless
but somehow precious, valuable to someone who
might mention it but not stoop to grasp them.
Meanwhile the fire murmured at the local and a band
not too loudly played a tune to nostalgia which was
a song to the gaps much as rain is
though no weather woke and the evening was pure
and the girls adorned bright dresses and eyelashes
and the boys played at marbles under the washing lines.
And there were names like Field-Goat, Does-Calculations,
names for irregular bleeding and discolouration,
names that made you laugh, many to make you rage,
and when the litany finished and the piping died down
the one led away was exactly what you'd expected –
it was Cheats-at-Cards-Elegantly, it was Mother-
of-Polite-Orphans, it was Thrown-Stone and Window,
it was Overwatchful-Eye, else Blind or Willow-Nose,
it was From-Foreign-Burrow but also Home-Over-Swollen,
it was Water-Supply and Ungodly-Wrong and Amen.


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