“The Bell” by Martin Jago
It’s coming back, the black brick of despair
they made you dive for, early September,
a monument today, stacked plastic chairs
in blazing orange glory. Dust remembers
the chorus of the great assembly hall,
and matron’s kindness hanging by a hinge
beneath the gralloch of its flattened walls.
Remember the smell of chlorine on your skin,
the way you used lick it, smell your hand?
The piano opens in a toothless yawn
and with the slow sweep of a mop the sand
snakes past,You don’t know you were born,
these were the best days of your life, they said.
The only bell that rings is in your head.
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Martin Jago is an emerging poet and an immigrant writer. A recent graduate of the University of Oxford’s Creative Writing Master’s program, he is the author of several plays and a several books on Shakespeare and classical text.
