Repairs

 

On Monday evenings,

the bellringers’ peals

practising down

the last of the sunlight,

I saw our neighbours,

tired in gardens, argue

children to bed

at the top of the house. 

Women shelled peas,

men sprawled in shade

or else dug sluggishly

round the roots of their roses,

murmurs dull in the close air

as shadows crept over

the earth and blackened

the wall beneath my window,

my father below,

back bent, shirt-sleeved,

cobbling boots under chinks

of the hammer on segs

clawed into heels and toes.

My brothers kicked

their way to school, struck

sparks from the pavement,

from the old man, too,

when he saw the scuff

on toughened leather.

He’d be below next hot Monday,

him holding silence, attuned

to over-wall chat, bells pealing

away his gone day’s work, 
hammer-swing singing on the iron last.