Blackout by Ross Thompson, written in Bangor during 2020 Lockdown
An eerie sort of shutdown, a form of solar eclipse
that brings to mind parental stories concerning the Blitz:
how, at the sound of an ululating klaxon, they hurried
to the cramped and dank space beneath the stairs, where they worried
that the sky would fall in an avalanche of planks and bricks.
You were for so long petrified of being in the dark:
plagued by nightmares of werewolves, atomic bombs, snakes and sharks,
and that slow vision of your hometown bleached pale of colour
where families and neighbours did not speak to each other,
ring-fenced by silence. No birdsong. No sharing of the heart’s
longing for reciprocal warmth. Petals shrinking on flowers.
A faulty circuit board. Lights snapping shut during a power
cut. And then, that dream actualised, made flesh: cafés, pools,
cinemas dark as country ditches; hair salons, parks, schools
empty as cracked pitchers; churches, like unheard signal towers,
broadcasting to vacant stations; bookstores and restaurants
a grim tapestry of roller shutters and locked shopfronts.
Fetching necessary groceries involved a sortie
of precision planning: a trench run through starless quarries
where the scent of danger leapt from every surface. Once
you returned, your uniform had to be burned; your rank, name
and raid redacted. You were not laid like cards on a game
table nor arranged like beads in a kinetic cradle
but jettisoned like pearls from a broken string, unable
to tether to the thing that held us before we became
lost in wherever here is… tundra, no man’s land, unclaimed
ground, ash heap, ghost parade of candles with wavering flames.