About His Person
Five pounds fifty in change, exactly,
library card on its date of expiry.
A postcard, stamped,
unwritten, but franked,
a pocket-size diary slashed with a pencil
from March twenty-fourth to the first of April.
A brace of keys for a mortise lock,
an analogue watch, self-winding, stopped.
A final demand
in his own hand,
a rolled-up note of explanation
planted there like a spray carnation
but beheaded, in his fist.
A shopping list.
A giveaway photograph stashed in his wallet,
a keepsake banked in the heart of a locket.
No gold or silver,
but crowning one finger
a ring of white unweathered skin.
That was everything.
Source of the text – Simon Armitage, Kid. London: Faber and Faber, 1992, p.85.
TJB: Detective-lyric. The consonant-heavy rhythm & West Yorkshire slang charge this character-sketch-accomplished-by-observing-objects with life.
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