Rag and Bone

Before celebrity there was you
a hoodwinked Buckaroo, rolling through
like pathos, like fog, destitute

the sleep in your eyes
was ambered time, a solid tear
of fortified wine

whistling Acker Bilk, in the guttered silt
two children hitched a ride
with a stolen bottle of milk

on that sullen Mardi Gras float
a red neckerchief knotted around the lump in your throat
the punishing sun cooking a Victorian overcoat

a stack of Perry Como LPs, the bestowed debris
a Hoover from Adam and an old dresser from Eve
all moving at the speed

of a Magdalene effigy
the trees bowed their heads in ceremony
to the gifts of broken matrimony

as household by household
we purged our homes
all going for a song

bicycles, parachutes, gramophones
the demobbed, odds and sods
we made our offerings to the gods

‘bring out your dead’
one man said, lowering the tone
‘don’t you still live with your father at home?’

You had found a place to keep the past
smothered under a threadbare Union Jack
secrets flagged

kept undercover
Nan blushed as if she had seen a lost lover
Grandad ran out across the street

and gave a ten bob note to his brother.