41

At the age of 41 I found myself sleeping rough on the streets of London, ironically with 41 pence to my name.

Wherever I slept I would awaken at four or five am, with the coins scattered around me, having worked themselves free from my pocket during the night. I imagined them as rats fleeing a sinking ship.

When I eventually returned home I had lost most of the feeling in one half of my right hand (although there has been some recovery my little finger is still partially numb). My first couple of weeks back had the quality of a waking dream where familiar settings such as my bedroom assumed monstrous and unfamiliar appearances. I expected at any moment to open my eyes and find myself back on the streets.

During this time I wrote down lines for a poem on scraps of paper.

I returned to these notes a few days ago and decided that I would work them into something for National Poetry Day.

41

by Mark Sadler

A cast-off from

the railway station,

who slipped free from

the end of the line

and was caught in

the purposeful eddies of

the evening rush-hour foot traffic,

is swept into the dingy corner

of some forlorn cul de sac

with soaped-up windows -

A heaped, vaguely human form

obscurely contoured

beneath a soiled blanket

A former climber

who in reduced circumstances

maps his ascent

on the horizontal plane.

In his sleep he claws

at the paving stones

in an attempt to gain

purchase on a handhold

or crushes against himself,

and holds his ebbing warmth

close to his chest

like a cherished treasure

that he will die to protect.

In the bleary, diesel-scented fog

of a grainy pre-dawn

supermarket delivery

he makes his own re-acquaintance,

recovers from the pavement

the small change

that migrated from his pockets

during the night.

The coins that flee his possession

in anticipation of a

greater tragedy to come

assume a tarnished constellation

around him.

Fallen stars

dimly recast in dulled metal

pressed flat beneath

the crushing gravity

of the world above his head

as he slowly sinks into two dimensions.

They resist his trembling attempts

to prise them from the

cold stone.

In the fading darkness of

another London night

where the foundations of sleep

have been restlessly sketched out

on a scrap of dirt

in an unlocked churchyard

a body in rehearsal for death

assumes the foetal position.