Ian C. Smith

I a n   C .  

S m i t h 

Reduction

Retching over nappies three days, it’s said,

the casket bought with money you borrow, 

gripped by one man, no headstone, just sorrow.

Did you bear your news in person, in dread,

by bus with your other child, time ahead,

traffic shrouded, worried by what you owe,

ghostly lights emerging through fog’s halo,

or write, ink bleeding on the page, instead?

Satan squatting on your chest like a clot,

letters dropped through a black hole, formal, brief,

falling in the dark, your hopes unfulfilled.

You would have said nothing about the cot,

the boy’s father, the trembling axe, his grief,

the wildly spinning mobiles slowing, stilled.

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