Dandelions

Where the end of the wall

And the waste ground meet

At the back of the canal

And Navigation street

Dandelions bold as brass

Grow among the bitter grass

In this place of empty chapels and aborted kilns

By the still smouldering fires

That burn the mattresses of the recently dead

These sour yellow flowers raise their heads

Damp rag suns that shine

On the sides of a lost loop line,

Among wild lupins and cinders

Fed on the dried excrement of dogs

Among the canal’s wet clinging fogs

Hard flower suns that gleam

By the edges of the poisoned stream,

Where the hiss and slip

Of a rat nuzzles against the dead body of a cat

Among the slime and burning lime

And down in the flattened cemetery

Where my drunken uncles lie,

Over the iron gate

Onto a bland white sky

Ghosts of these rag suns are blown away

Into the passing traffic of the day.