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Friday Night and Monday's Mourning

Peter Bland

The day's four seasons sidle down to early dark
In the teaming town and bugling trollies bungle
Round the window-studded streets, where bullying
Boys and grinning girls, gander to steaming
Coffee stalls; and so another Friday night
Has wedged me tight in kerb-side clatter,
Ringing change, endless chatter, ripe fruit, frying batter,
Coloured cloth, salesman's patter, perfume, candy and tobacco.

Yet while the town sucks purses dry, I think
Of Monday, sharp and sly, for Friday's a gypsy
Who lives on a lie and plucks your palm of silver.
But whatever we sow, on Monday we reap, five more
Days to the end of the week, and the pangs of birth
End the weekend sleep, in the light of a Monday morning.

Sunday

Peter Bland

A steeple shuttles out its flock of bells, waking
The avenue to late breakfast and the crackle
Of motor mowers from the neighbouring park.
The suburbs reprieved, discover with delight
Their gift of time to tamper and tinkle with.

Some take Sunday like a laxative;
Intoxicated with seventh-day freedom
Revert to infancy, build castles in the sand;
Or park the car and listen to the band,
Watching the world go by in cinemascope.

Foreign and familiar faces gather sun struck
On the promenade, where summer is secondary
To what this season's lovers wear, who,
Enchanted and self-engrossed, scatter the sea,
Tumbling like ripe fruit from a paper bag.

The vacant city like an undiscovered pyramid
Lies open to the air; the star of last week's movie
Smiles in her nakedness across an empty street.
Some sailors from a foreign ship stare, half-afraid,
Wondering where the music and the laughter's gone.