These after-days are winding down

In Hampstead Lakes and Kentish Town

A friend I have or had is gone

Or lives yet hiding; what’s he hiding from?

 

Blunders that rout inside himself, had he but known

A man who aimed beside himself; jealous alone

At blotting wide arch memories, sealing a past

And often I fear his evening time has come at last  

Why is there thus much lading full the carriageway?

A bigger bear to bear up each proceeding day on day

Retainers claim the hour, the calendar, and more

Accusative connections bulk up: close that door  

Contaminants pitch all life’s stroll remains unended

A rat or rabbit-hole; one and the same’s intended

And he my fellow struggler moved on stringier strands

The manikin’s hands moving held by other hands  

A clutch of cotton threads tangling submission holds

So many, mad and merry, as a factory folds

Around and over, again, a ginn, a gangling complex

Was his, or maybe is, the stunted cheap fix  

The tickings of the clock damped rather chequeredly

By pads behind the ear and paddings intermittently

Crammed so thick thus that packed could wad his wonted dolours

His dear despair, his punctuated terrors  

A hypertensive, one-way essayed culvert cover

A place where lost leaves come to congregate

A place at last a pulped past parks, and catches up with,

Fast gathers there like plugholes catch collected hair  

Or animals fetch up in, being terminal assemblage

Decocted here an ecosystem’s toppled, ended,

Close matted where one size fits all; a passage to be candid

That’s bought and paid for hourly; added to and complemented  

You see, my friend, wherever his remote brought casting place

This is his end: I cannot turn my face away