Do they go there to die or creep
there for comfort -
the tattered and the stained, the
smelly, old and tired?
Do they worry that colourful
identities
will leach away to fuse with
others’ uniform grey;
fear that unaccustomed warmth will
diminish them?
Do comfortable partners, that lay
together
in old darks, walked side by side,
dread separation?
Tossed out by cold hands, lost and
suffocated, crushed,
do they resent being companioned
by strangers
who have their own needs, their own
inadequacies,
their own spittle and B.O. -
worse, their own rejection?
Do old clothes count long night
hours before tomorrow?
Does life itself tumble to a
linen-basket
spilling the tattered, stained,
the smelly, old and tired?
Rather that than unimaginable
cleansing
in automatic whiter-than-white
hereafter...
Shall I cobble on a label: ‘Hand-wash only,
do not spin or wring, dry away
from direct heat’?
Sorting whites from coloureds,
will anyone read it?
(September,
1989)
