This poem was written during a periodic wave of pessimism about the state of my local town. Its antidote is The Drowned Town. And Half Lives is the monstrous offspring of the two of them.
Emmets
We used to have a word for those
upcountry types who came down here,
usually from London
(think Virginia Woolf or Ben Nicholson),
taken with the fiction of the sea,
the quality of light, the locals’ authenticity,
and their inspiring artlessness
(reference Alfred Wallis),
discovering a New World of primitives
like Christopher Columbuses.
Nowadays, who knows why they come.
Returns on investments, the beaches, the Tate,
the locally sourced meat, the line-caught fish,
or the perfect house fiction
of Living Etc. and Elle Decoration?
Or perhaps it’s the thrill
of having this bit on the side,
a sort of courtesan
and visited out of season
like a Victorian husband.
They buy a place and do little
work themselves, they get the locals in for that,
and spend a bomb,
ripping out the ugly vernacular
of Aunt Eliza’s cottage
and call it The Old Net Loft Dot Com.
The envy of their friends,
but the house is mostly empty,
lightless and locked.
It looks sad. Botoxed.
Now the shops are shut
and the neighbours elsewhere too,
the ardour cools
and the damp creeps back.
Slow as radon rising from old mine stacks,
it gradually becomes clear,
and, come January, the sea
is a blank grey indifference:
don’t take it personally,
but you don’t belong here.
And neither do we.