Saturday February 2nd 2008
It is snowing intermittently. Not enough to hide all the ugliness. Not enough to cover the sludge with thrown down filter tips mixed in like toffee nuggets in a fudge brownie served with the ersatz mud coffee you made in rusted paint pots and stirred with a stick down by the creek when you were a kid , that sloshes in the gutters and banks up like dams so the drains overflow. Not enough to smooth out the deadness of early February and endow the nodding snowdrops with that ironic hopefulness they should have.
Despite the snow showers, the sleet that whips down the backstreet , the Lithuanian boy is cleaning the BMWs. His hands are red raw; he pulls his hat down over his ears and tucks his scarf into the front of his jacket. He leans over, stretching to reach into the bottom of the engine, exposing such an expanse of bare skin that I hear echoes of old people’s admonishments half a century ago to “ tuck in your vest before you get a chill in your kidneys”; almost feel rough hands ramming scratchy woollies down the back of my pants.
And they say the English are mad. Bubbles float up towards my vantage point, white suds fly from his sponge as he scrubs the spoked alloy wheels with Teutonic vigour , eyes narrowed to glittery slits against the wind as he crouches, cat-like, feral. I am not sure which are snowflakes and which blobs of soapy foam; not sure if I am looking into a shaken snow globe or looking out from one.
Froth gathers in islands, on the road, drifts in the culverts like lilies, glows in the gathering dusk, pretending. Later it freezes without receding, an ice tide in the urban moonscape.
No comments:
Post a Comment