The Terrible Outside

The bus I often took as a boy to visit an aunt

went past it. From the top deck I would look

beyond the wall for signs of life: a rooftop protest,

a banner hung from cell windows. I would picture

the escape. Two men sliding down the rope

and legging it up Walton Vale. Maybe hijacking

the bus and holding us hostage. But I’d talk them

round. Share my sweets and pay their fares.

Years later I am invited there to run a poetry

workshop. An escapism easily contained.

And as I check in and pass through security,

and as door after door clangs open and shut,

I imagine that I am a prisoner. ‘But I’m innocent,

I tell you. I was framed.’ It’s no use protesting,

take the old lag’s advice, just keep your head down

and get on with it. The three hours will soon pass.

A class of eighteen. All lifers in their early twenties,

most with tattoos, childishly scratched and inked in.

Nervous, I remove my raincoat and shake my

umbrella. ‘It’s terrible outside,’ I say. Then panic.

‘I mean, compared to life inside it’s not terrible…

It’s good. It was the weather I was talking about.

Outside, it’s really bad. But not as bad as in here,

of course. Being locked up… it must be terrible.’

They look at me blankly, wondering perhaps

if that was my first poem and not thinking much of it.

We talk. I read my stuff and they read theirs.

I answer questions (about fashion and music).

The questions I want to ask I can’t. ‘Hands up

those who killed their fathers? Hands up

those who killed more than once? Hands up…’

But those hands are clean, those faces bright.

Any one of them I’d trust with my life.

Or would I? Time’s up and the door clangs open.

They all gather round and insist on shaking my hand.

A hand that touches women, that lifts pints, a hand

that counts money, that buttons up brand-new shirts.

A hand that shakes the hand of the Governor,

that raises an umbrella and waves down a cab.

A hand that trembles and clenches and pushes

itself deep into a raincoat pocket. A hand

that is glad to be part of the terrible outside.