Poetry by Paul Sutton

INORGANIC
 
If only this poem would write itself.
Proof I'm no poet – no one at your
memorial service believed I was.
 
Science scares me now –  
how I'd vanish into my head; 
it was as if ‘dead like that.’
 
Did that kill you, the daughter 
you never saw, songs of 
loss in Irish bars – tearful
generalities – your little girl 
growing up on her own?
 
It's not so wrong to judge. Let's worry
for children, the damage they suffer:  
their absolute need for parents. Your 
service, the talk of fluorine chemistry, 
intricate successes. And who am I
to write of failure – drifted, wasted –  
angry as a wasp at a window?
 
Long first-term afternoons, Inorganic 
lab, Oxford blue into violet. Whirring
magnetic stirrers, heart-ache colours,
transition metal ions – surely that's 
magic? Somehow it’s passed me by.   
 
Imagine a hot afternoon, somewhere 
in America, sidewalks and successes,  
places with tenure and funding and 
citations of publications. And then, 
think of a girl who wants to see her
father – when he can't ever see her.
She's not invisible, but the strongest
spectroscopy won’t bring him to light.
 
Well, that’s it – all in the past – who can
count the bits? These constant seconds,
views from windows, odd thoughts on
old conversations – ‘we’re the loneliest
men alive!’ you joked – the morning our
finals started. No way to say I remember.
 

(for Sean McGrady, 9th April 1964 – 12th August 2017)


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Bio: Paul Sutton, Born in London, 1964. Five collections - most recent from UK publisher Knives, Forks and Spoons Press: "The Diversification of Dave Turnip", March 2017. "Falling Off" (KFS, January 2015) was Poetry Book Society Recommended Autumn Reading, 2015. US Collection "Brains Scream at Night" (2010) from NY publisher BlazeVox.