To be honest, I’ve not been looking forward to today. Last post (in the series). But I promise you, it’s a good one. Like all the others. Thank you all for following.

X-rays are my life (David White)
(the Radiologist)
.
When this is all over I shall shed tears of blackened silver
.
But then it’s not silver anymore
So maybe I shall shed pixels
.
But it’s all pictures
with beauty and sadness
Surprises and sameness
A tree in bud
A fissure found
A neoplasm blossoming unexpected
Like Breughel
After plague
No vague hope of vaccines just prayer
His Triumph of death
.
And hope was less that tides could be turned and breath could be saved
.
But also that crowns came with thorns
And redemption
.
But Now
.
Fluffy shadows on a screen
The puff and wheeze of air and spit and sweat and shit
And tears over phones
No hands to be held
Without plastic and masks
.
How will I leave those shadows behind?
.
A Xylophonist reflects (Rachel Davies)
When this is all over
and the C# Minor strains of the requiem’s
final movement dissolve and fade,
when the world is open for business again
and I’m free to go anywhere I choose
.
I’ll choose to sit on the banks of the Congo
in the shade of a great mninga tree
eat nyembwe with saka saka
and let my instrument speak
to its ancestors, rediscover the peace
of connection, hear the music of a warm
breath of wind over its wingfruit,
its coral wood. When this is all over,
.
I want to discover a new normal
away from the accelerando and allegro
away from the march and symphony,
in the quiet hymnal of the forest,
find the largo I fear I’ve lost.
.

.

Zaminder (Ruth Valentine)
.
When all this is over, said the zamindar,
the tenants will queue at my door to press their taxes
into my sapphire-ringed hands, along with gifts,
water-buffalo, rice, and from time to time
their most beautiful daughters.
I will of course decline
.
at first. My ten per cent
will go towards building a bigger palace
with daring frescoes copied from Isfahan
in the private rooms, and peacocks in the gardens.
The Resident
will get off his high horse and bow to me.
I’ll requisition the horse. I’ll organise
polo on the maidan, and champagne cocktails
afterwards on the verandah. There’ll be none of this
insolence or elections or journalism.
.
Zamindar: in the Indian sub-continent, a landowner who collected taxes on behalf of the Mughal and later British ruler
.
The Zinc Plater (Wendy Pratt)
.
When this is all over
I will never clean again.
.
Dust will gather on the surfaces
in balls and motes the size of mice.
I’ll run my fingers through it;
let the breeze release it like pollen.
.
I will pickle only food: rough-skinned gherkins,
slick aubergines, the hard whites of onions.
.
There will be no baths, no bathing.
I will wash at the Belfast sink with water
from my own well, water I heaved
from the dank earth, water that stinks
of moss and peat. I will swim
in silt-clouded rivers and nothing
will be rinsed away.
.
I will live by the light of gas lamps
or candles; the honeyed scent
of bee’s wax. There will be
no electricity, for me.
.
My skin will be tanned mahogany
by red flakes falling from my corrugated roof,
my boots will crust with it, my white linen
will blush with it.
.
When this is all over, nothing
will be smoothed to a mirror-shine
and no surface will be untrue to itself.
.
Zookeeper (Maggie Reed)
after Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
.
When this is all over, said the zookeeper,
I’ll move to the North, where
property is cheaper and they have hedges,
drystone walls – fewer fences or railings.
.
I’ll roam the Cumbrian fells, watch ravens
soar through the blue, pick heather,
stomp through the bog grasses, laugh
like a hyena at the full moon.
.
Listen, I can do this, learn how to let go,
run with the ants and spiders,
bounce with the bees.
I’ll follow my nose to the dark
.
corners (under stones, behind bark)
I’ll root out the undiscovered,
the unloved, place them in my heart,
beside the tiger, elephant, chimpanzee.
.
And here we are, at the very end . Whatever will I do with my time? Hang on…there’s the selection, then the announcements, the joy and the despair, the re-editing. Not the very end at all.
And in any case, I almost forgot that we started with a Prologue poem by Ian Parks, and we’ll end this leg of the journey with a stunning Epilogue ,a reflection on the ultimate when this is all over, from the endlessly prolific and multi-talented Jane Burn..
.
On the idea of leaving a part of myself wherever my ancestors lie
A piece of me left to the absent coal
and the village that failed above its death –
to Ireland, ringed by the sea’s aureole
ever binding the secret of my kith.
A piece of me left to the scrapman’s cart
like a glint of tin in the gathered trash.
To Scotland and its beating selkie heart,
I will gift my changeling pelt of fired ash.
It will end with me, this birthright of scars.
The sky will carry my epitaph. Jane,
you did not rise up. You were not the stars.
here you were made and here you will remain.
Wherever my kin are cloistered beneath
I will lay my ghost like a coffin’s wreath.
.
Falling leaves return to their roots : Chinese Proverb

When this is over : (Andy Blackford)
Nothing is ever over.
.
Events roll out of the night of the past
collide like snooker balls or Black Holes;
rebound and ricochet; altered, rumble on
to make their next encounter.
.
They leave us older, occasionally wiser.
But wisdom peels like wallpaper, otherwise
we’d all be hovering about as Archangels.
.
What we seem to learn least well is how we never learn.
For all the tears and fears, we opt to stay perpetual pupils,
truants on Double History day, wide-eyed and barefoot
because sometimes, suffering and joy are inextricable
and dangerous innocence is the price we pay for ecstasy.
.
Last night, the Hubble Telescope was 30.
An aged astronaut talked us through a photograph
of Deep Time; a proto-galaxy hanging in the dark
a foetus in the womb of space, about to roll
out of the night of the past.
.
Nothing is ever
over.