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- MICHAEL SHARKEY
two poems
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CELEBRITY
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- News is full of people we don’t know
and
- whom we never wished to read about or
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- think of every day, but they insist: we
see
- their images while we flick through pages
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- as we sit in waiting rooms to hear how
much
- time we have left. They have eternity and
youth,
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- and we have neither. Sometimes, we
imagine
- they could age. They never will:
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- their photographs will cease or learn to
lie.
- And so their lives will have no end.
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- Beauty such as theirs is their concern.
- We have enough to do without them,
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- but they haunt us, much as we know we
- are dead to them and they are dead to us.
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- Could we exist when they go missing?
- Could they suffer? Do they talk of being
human?
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- What on earth is that to them? Their sole
- appeal is to our longing for no change:
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- we are unworthy of their presence, feel
our clay
- begin to crumble when they walk into a
room.
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- What were we doing there? We share so
little
- with them that we can’t believe
we’ve seen them
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- in the flesh where we do not believe they
live.
- Often we declare we want to die when they
appear.
THE PRIME MINIATURE
(A BORDERLINE CASE)
- I heard the news: it’s on again:
- We’ll lose our names, we’ll
never eat
- An honest pie with mash and peas
- If we don’t cut the country down
- To size. His size. We’ll have to
shrink.
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- An island here, an atoll there:
- They won’t be missed. The
answer’s clear:
- We’ll go platonic, pure idea,
- Like terra nullius incognita.
- History never happened here.
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- Now you see us, now you don’t;
- There’s nothing here that’s
girt by sea.
- There’s no such thing as refugees.
- The map’s a fiction; nothing’s
true.
- I don’t exist and nor do you.
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- The mantra works: the daily news
- Informs whoever cares that queues
- Of camels specially bred for size
- Are galloping through needles’ eyes
- And overcrowding Paradise.
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