He handles the two wheelie bins with such assurance
As he blinks wrinkled eyelids over steeled cow eyes
He bumps them down the raised curb and doesn’t disturb
Even the smallest of the neighbour’s oven-cooked fries
He opens the plastic white door with effortless relentlessness
He brushes each shoe off with the other foot
He breathes in his life and thinks ‘how can I repent for this?’
But thinks it in different words, different words all covered in soot
He has made the money and this woman has made the tasteless dinner
And that’s all each of them has made this year
They can’t make conversation, so tonight it will be the endless radio station
That evaporates all the jail-breaking tears
After another dreamless night disturbed only by nature’s disturbed sigh
He drives his clean and well-running car with competency through traffic streams
Maybe he could buy a new one next year
Which he could drive with competency and then clean
Sitting at work and working while he sits
There’s no time to think or hope or cry or love
To fail is to be human and a true man always knows
That to be clouded in failure is a silver-lined blessing from above
His writing is readable and adept but nothing he writes is his own
He records and copies and he never smudges
But everything he writes takes nothing from his lightless nights
He holds his pen like he holds his grudges
Fast forward forty years, if only it were that easy
He has done it all real time with every wheelie bin he’s lifted
Every drop of the curb he’s cushioned with his wrist
He’s done the forty years, done it; hasn’t lived it
So what is there to say, what can you say about this man lying here?
He was born, he did, then he died
He left a fading memory and three kids
And the peeling paint on the garage that he’d once applied
But no need to worry because his youngest was a son
Who watched his father on the pavement and watched him in the rain
He’s passed his driving test and today is Thursday
Don’t disturb the neighbours, and do it all again