Glasgow Sonnet No. 1

i

A mean wind wanders through the backcourt trash.
Hackles on puddles rise, old mattresses
puff briefly and subside. Play-fortresses
of brick and bric-a-brac spill out some ash.
Four storeys have no windows left to smash,
but the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
mother and daughter the last mistresses
of that black block condemned to stand, not crash.
Around them the cracks deepen, the rats crawl.
The kettle whimpers on a crazy hob.
Roses of mould grow from ceiling to wall.
The man lies late since he has lost his job,
smokes on one elbow, letting his coughs fall
thinly into an air too poor to rob.

EDWIN MORGAN
From Collected Poems, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1990

The poem is part of Glasgow Sonnets, a sequence of 10 sonnets, numbered i to x, which was originally published in 1972 by Castlelaw Press, West Linton.