Time Out by Mary Gilonne

Arts Richmond

Online - 25 September 2020

Against this shilly-shally of calculating keyholes,

always a piercing eye within without,

a draught-tipped tongue of accusing light.

How they manipulate our minuted lives, dilly-dally

sibylline Shakespearean doubts.

Doors are blank with closed knowledge,

turn their abiding backs on our daily deeds,

until a bunch of pocketed flunkeys

rattle in like snakes, spitefully unlock.

Give me the timeless slip and clunking shot

of a well-oiled tight-lipped bolt.

from ABOUT TIME, the 2019 anthology of shortlisted entries from The Roger McGough Poetry Prize. Copies of this Anthology can be purchased for £5 including P&P from Arts Richmond.