Signs | Another poem from New and selected | Listen now

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Signs

In the back of the Zodiac I watch you come out of your house
morning after morning, a given routine I have no real quibble with,
except its dullness, the Light Programme music of Bert Kaempfert,

the cigarette smoke, the greasy roads, the greyness of the Midland
city before the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, the queasy feeling in
my stomach from the Shreddies. It must be a particular morning

I remember because I always see the same sad sights, the floodplain
near the mine, the new aluminium extrusion plant, the old sandstone
river bridge, the railway bridge, the speedo ticking up to thirty, forty

but ready for the right-hand turn up your road, where you come out
of your house morning after morning, with a flower pattern dress,
a cardy, an unbuttoned coat, high heels, legs too good for your face,

glasses with little coloured wings on the top on either side, like waves
or the manes of toy ponies, buck teeth, badly cut hair; strange I remember
all this now. Why did I feel that particular morning was so important,

why does the image of the speedo stay with me, why can I see the curve
of the steering wheel and the profile of the businessman in the front seat?
Was this the morning it all started to go wrong as the dark blue Zodiac

cruised up the street and you stepped off the kerb for the nearside door
even before we had stopped. Was that part of the game to feel the door
swing open with the car still moving, you Catherine Deneuve

in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg or Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
and me just the kid in the back of the car? Who are you anyway?
We’re on the dual carriageway and are you both talking or do you

stay quiet because of the boy in the back of the car whose view
is of the radio and the backs of your seats and the hands moving
together to the cigarette lighter? I’m really stuck. Was this the day

I got stuck? Stuck in the sixties coming out of the fifties, stuck with
a love of cold grey mornings and movement through suburbs
in a dark blue Zodiac, speedo ticking, at the wheel, a man I can trust.

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