Here and Now

Eddie is sitting the exam,
he has just started answering questions,
there’s that well-known, quivering
thin sun in the string of his voice,
he has just finished sitting Art, it’s my turn now,
well, neat, concise sentences, he’s ok,
he shifts to the others along the long
sand-coloured table, the Art colleague
whispers to me something about the sky
- a Constable sky outside, look- she says, to pass the time,
I see the swollen, swept-by clouds in the blue
but I am thinking about how late
it is after all these hours of exams,
after waiting, glancing, nodding,
in this long and narrow Now
while Eddie gets to a standstill
unable to explain a Maths formula,
pen in mid-air, a glassy, tense
sheen in his eyes, a pit, a ravine
that hurts –better to go on- we say to him,
to Latin, quick, -don’t worry now-
while a janitor comes in and whispers something
in the Art colleague’s ear, she becomes
dark in the face and says
that her old mother has just fallen at home
down the stairs, she has managed
to get to bed, they have told her
not to move and wait for help,
in the meantime Eddie is answering
about Carthage and Dido’s love,
I see sand on African shores
and wind sweeping the Constable clouds
with the pulse of the
dead worried colleague, her heart
here and not here

and the grip of all that ticks in the instants,
time’s irises and a pen still in mid-air,
time’s stare I don’t want to feel detached from
and whose quicksilver glare has always,
in spite of its impending pain,
already embraced and overtaken me.

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