Tramp in Flames (by Paul Farley)

Tramp in Flames (by Paul Farley)

1Some similes act like heat shields for re-entry
2to reality: a tramp in flames on the floor.
3We can say Flame on! to invoke the Human Torch
4from the Fantastic Four. We can switch to art
5and imagine Dali at this latitude
6doing CCTV surrealism.
7We could compare him to a protest monk
8sat up the way he is. We could force the lock
9of memory: at the crematorium
10my uncle said the burning bodies rose
11like Draculas from their boxes.
12         But his layers
13burn brightly, and the salts locked in his hems
14give off the colours of a Roman candle,
15and the smell is like a foot-and-mouth pyre
16in the middle of the city he was born in,
17and the bin bags melt and fuse him to the pavement
18and a pool forms like the way he wet himself
19sat on the school floor forty years before,
20and then the hand goes up. The hand goes up.
Publication Notes
Paul Farley, Tramp in Flames (London : Picador, 2006). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2007 International Shortlist).
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011