Extended day for close-cropped little noggins
kept in by a stockade of failing scores,
but catapults can’t cross the cordon, so things
for me could be considerably worse.
There’s many ways of holding in the warmth
besides packing the window frames with mastic.
Dimly, as through a darkened pane, I watch
the teacher’s pointer travel downwards, tracking
along the path of birds’ migration route,
observed by dunderhead and lazybones.
South, to the south, it’s always to the south.
This holds in heat better than double glazing.
The Academy of Sciences in vain pursuit
dispatching wireless cables after us.
And then it’s ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
And in response, a groan of happiness.
Where January’s absent from the diary,
shame-saving leaf covers the fount of grief,
stewed monkey meat provides the staple diet,
figs grow on trees, so no-one gives a fig.
We’ll christen these happy islands, these we’ll dub
with names of russified Germans, and thereafter
we’ll sail back to the city on the gulf –
the hemispheres are in my schoolboy atlas.
A yellow-hulled and golden-masted cruiser
is beached within the northern capital.
Her wardroom solid pipe-smoking infusion.
There’s blank-faced portraits hung on every wall.
I mean, all ready for the boy are martial
deportment, sideburn over shoulderboard,
the story of defeating Bonaparte
allied with Nelson, – instead of face, a hole.
The hard-man bosun pipes up with his whistle.
Stewards take orders from the galley cook.
From every portrait down at me is watching
a little specky boy with chubby cheeks.