Roused from its heli-pad by the sea, a helicopter sweeps its spotlight back and forth along Claude Road, looking for the man in Rambo outfit


spotted halfway up a scaffold with a belt of knives. For a while I listen as it clatters round the moon, as faithful as a moth around a dusty lantern


in a hot room, and then it wheels away to Splott, and I hear single men come lurching home, their giros done, their terrible hangovers still unborn,


while cabs of girls, all vodka primed, set off noisily for clubs in town to dance and lose their underwear on waste ground behind factories at dawn.


*


Now happy couples are turning in to make love on the counterpane then slumber in each other’s arms, while lonely people in the darkness scan


the street for them, and pine that nothing better than their own two arms will come to bed with them tonight or any other night at all. Rooms


and rooms and rooms, some circumspect and some ruins, some step one to family homes, some the last home but the funeral one, and all owned


by men out there in golden and portcullised places on the edge of town with car-ports, paddocks, swimming pools, and gates of iron with cameras on.


J. Brookes


21


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