Tom McGrath

I don’t have the least idea of who this guy McGrath is. I bought a second-hand anthology of Scottish poetry just because it was Scottish, cheap, and it had a few Edwin Morgan poems. It has a card from the Finger Lakes Library System Central Library (that would be a quite big area in the north of New York State), showing that no one had ever borrowed the book; the card was stamped DISCARDED. Isn’t that a pity? There’s no way of saying whether anyone ever read the book, but still, never borrowed!

Tom McGrath, Night Songs. The small letters, including the “i”, are not typos.

I
to make poems
from bricks
cities
from words

either

a conversation
with a gutter
or a song
to sweep
the streets

i continue
to eat a lot
and sleep
too little

II
yes the madwoman screams
racialism
past my window

the drunk man shouts
that the bastard o'reilly
will tonight
be knifed

yes

the city sickens the heart

gutters do talk

contraceptives and rats

I should have read Mumford
or travelled more

III
the gutters of suburbia
say no more than whispers
behind curtains

the poetry of keyholes

IV
being in the city
i am a junkyard

V
i can continue
because
the night does

regardless