Sorry
When I hurt you and cast you off, that was buccaneer work:
the sky must have turned on the Bay that day and spat.
We’d tarried on corners, we’d dallied on sofas, we were
in progress, do you see? Yet stormcloud bruises bloomed
where once we touched. The walls swam under minty fever;
we failed to reach the long, low sleep of conquerors.
Since I played wrong and you did too, since we were wrong,
we need apologies; for your part in this sorry slip of hearts,
you should walk on Golden Hill at night alone; for mine
I will hang with my enemies, out on the long shore,
our brigand bodies impaled on the horns of our failures,
the cold day casting draughts through our brinkled bones.
Copyright Credit: Roddy Lumsden, “Sorry” from Mischief Night: New and Selected Poems, 2004. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Source: Mischief Night (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)