Atlas by U A Fanthorpe
There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes, which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in the air,
As Atlas did the sky.
Dedicated to the many people I love without whom my life would be total chaos and misery...
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No no NO! I was tortured by UA Fanthorpe at A Level (might as well have been in person, the amount of pain inflicted). A combination of the workaday and mythological. In. Every. Single. Bloody. Poem.
ReplyDeleteGaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
We studied a book for French A level and after a while I began to believe that if our teacher said anything else about such and such an event being an illustration of how "dehumanised" the characters in the book were by their situation I was going to have to carry out a massacre...
ReplyDeleteWas so traumatic I have wiped all traces of the book - oh no! I just remembered - it was called Elise ou la vrai vie and it was by someone called Claire Etcherelli. Gah indeed.
No matter how good a book, a year of study at school with smash it forever.