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Itinerant
Polishing my square-toed brogues,
I think about journey, that measure
of breaking out of myself
which never leaves me.
I catch each venture like a living thing;
improvised, it cuts free - shoe-inviting,
pressing the day; my heart drums fast, faster.
I tell myself, Your feet have never
failed you… Whatever happens,
the journey’s always there:
sometimes dark, sometimes clear,
the way - on this road you’re wedded
to - a mountain will appear, climbing
suddenly out of a wall of mist.
Katherine Gallagher, London
Once Upon a Time in the Wild, Wild West
“I don’t blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then I don’t know if anyone would believe anything good of me anyway”. (Billy the Kid to a Las Vegas Gazette reporter, December 1880).
Funny how blood follows a man like me,
runs like a river through his life. I’ve killed
a lot of men, a lot of men have tried to kill me.
But I never killed no twenty-one people
like they say I did. I never killed no one
when I was twelve years old. Seventeen
first time I shot a man dead, and he was a son-of
-a-bitch. But none of that matters now I guess,
now I can hear him breathing in the dark.
Quien es? Quien es? He leans forward,
face bone-white in the moonlight, whispers
my name real soft, like a lover. It’s funny,
the angel of death is wearing the face
of a man I might have called friend.
* Quien es? (Who’s there?). Billy’s last words before Pat Garrett shot him dead.
Jonathan Attrill, London
