TIM THORNE

Bronte Country

I swear I saw Branwell, young again,
in a pub in Haworth through the karaoke crowd.
I remembered Doris Leadbetter's story of the village drunk
who sat in the corner "an' Branwell were the village drunk before me
an' this were 'is chair." This dark-curled American tourist, all Pre-Raphaelite
and solitary with his bitter, not playing the pokies and definitely not
looking at the historical prints of railway scenes as monochrome as the skyline,
TV antennae and all, on a day no brighter than the parsonage,
sat, still as the couch on which Emily died but better preserved,
his eyes the colour of the tumbling gravestones up on the hill
or the shadows that hide, waiting for the sunlight
when they will skid like fictitious siblings,
a source of visible delight
but unnecessary.