Our poet Anne Stewart has met her Person from Porlock – “him trying to get past me into the house after I’d said ‘no, thanks’ didn’t help!” At any event, she confounded him with those dread words “And never darken my doorway again”. Today is Day 745 of the Daily Poems. And by the way, if you’re asking, it takes about three days and two nights to get from Mopti to Timbuktu by boat.
To the man from E.ON
… who broke into my morning
who offended my eyes with his yellow coat and clipboard
and ready mouth in a cock-o’-the-walk stupid grin
but was just not quick enough to get past
my foot in the door
(and clearly shocked that I had the audacity – or perhaps
it was the wherewithal? – to put it there)
who interrupted me in mid-flow (and of who knows what?
It might have been something important
to the last English man
ever to take a pinasse from Mopti to Timbukto)
who was so ready to take my emphatic ‘No’ for an answer
but with the meaning ‘Come ahead.’ and maybe
‘Tell me everything. I want to know.’
to whom I then said in quick fire and exclamatory tone ‘No’
and ‘Out’ and ‘Away’ and ‘Go’ – ‘And never darken
my doorway again’
who was clearly dismayed by my pointing finger,
my slamming the door shut on his ‘But I’ve …’
and battening up (incontrovertible,
that partnershipof the knocker’s hard slap
as it bounces back on the plate
and the clunking roll of the key in the lock)
and who, after he departed (I presumed)
made me laugh to have dredged up that ‘darken my doorway’
without a thought and at how much I enjoyed its immediacy,
its voluminosity, so much that my head wouldn’t let it go
(and is making me laugh again today!)
and who is, even now, sitting in his little white van
up some dispassionate road looking desultory
after a multitude of ‘No’s and wondering what it is
he’s doing wrong and why bother to get up at all …
I just want to say: I’m glad I’m not you, testing the patience
of all and sundry, finding its limits
a hundred times a day
so please don’t take it personally if I drop a brick on your head,
metaphorically of course, from the upstairs window –
it’s only my way of asking you to accept, unhelpful
as it is to you, that ludicrous maxim: ‘No’ means ‘No’.
Anne Stewart