Time Will Come There's Nothing Left

in memory of Ted McNulty, d. 1998

Time will come there's nothing left
of hand. Not field, flower, nor woman
have the power to break the white
that blinds the heart. Unknown the when
will come that furious final act
of putting down the pen forever,

pen that waits in folded dark
the hand will take it out from coins,
receipts, bus tickets, bric-a-brac
of life's untidy edges, waits
for hand will draw it out for shop list,
crossword puzzle, milkman's note

and‹when the blood sings‹tap temple,
ease along the lip, submit
to tongue until a line of figures
break the white where nothing was
before. And time will come his jacket,
shrugged into his shape and stoop,

will hang for weeks until it settle
out of him, its pockets emptied,
one or two things set aside
as useful: key, some coins, a pen
that stands an idle month, a year
a time until it sheds his touch,

his slanting it to page, becomes
again pen, fit for any hand
would take it, break the blinding white
because the time will come there's nothing
left of hand but never time
will come there's nothing left to write.

'The world revolves like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots' - T.S. Eliot

She wears the loosely-waisted dress of women
who've borne children, become broad-hipped.
She slips her coloured headscarf off in that
well-practised twist of thumb on knot and holds it

close against her nose and mouth. Her hair,
clipped short, is windswept and she smoothes it
as she steps among the tables, slowly,
weighing up the best cuts off the bone,

the bits might make a soup, the scraps would feed
the dog. For months no supermarket shelf
has shown such wide display, but here today
her housewife's eye is clouded. Here today

on offer, crated, hosed of all the mud
they shared for months lie husbands, fathers, sons
of Visoko, each reassembled frame
of rib and rag to be identified

as what is left of a beloved. She
moves slowly past each figure, twisted rigid
in his last sharp foetal agony. She
scans the names and number tags. A skull

stares back, its mandible looped, respectfully,
along the box's edge. The man with clipboard
comes and whispers. Yes, she nods. Yes.
And a camera whirrs and she becomes

Niobe, yes, still as a rock, but tearless.
Yes, she's Deianeira too, but yet
won't kill herself for love but carry this
last Yes for all that's left of all her days

and nights. She signs. Yes. And collects
his keys and coins, steps into cratered streets,
becomes again a housewife scouring shops
for milk, fresh vegetables, a little meat.