" ... Isn't it a beautiful world? ..."

        Ebenso muss jades bewusstsein auf den Tod des anderen gehen      

Hegel

The tradition of all dead generations
sits like a nightmare on
his brain this fractured Monday morning,

fuelled by phrases snatched from relations
who arrived unannounced, and the other stakes upon
which his life is stretched to the tune of stifled yawning.

As well as, somewhere else, the private
space - one man falling
apart with his own careful, planned grace

after a day's banter of unspoken hates,
the ring of phones, the click of pens, and telling
sighs across a staff room floor.  The human price

of all this? - you can see that come in its own stages,
precise, like a perfectly filled time sheet for weekly wages.

© Dougal McNeill.  All Rights Reserved.