The Past
“I didn’t think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows.”
– Bart Simpson
The past, friends, sucked. We must not say so.
After all, the museums groan, the great railway
from Bombay Bori Bunder to Tannah
is displayed, and we ourselves groan and display.
And moreover, we miss the golden
and soft curled-edges of things,
and the way their boxers boxed, viz.,
like players of invisible trombones.
But, unpopular assertion:
Comăneci, Churchill, Mark Spitz, Blyton —
these people all blow by modern standards,
the past is where most people have died,
the moustaches looked bad, and all in all,
I am looking forward to life, that is:
love, work, freedom, etc., unless for some reason
we’ve improved things less in those fields than others.
Ali Lewis is a 28-year-old poet from Nottingham. His poems have appeared in magazines including The Poetry Review, The Rialto, Magma and Ambit. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, where he was shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Award, and a BA in Politics from the University of Cambridge, where he received the John Dunn and Precious Pearl prizes. He is the editorial, marketing and special projects manager at the Poetry School.