JANE AND THE IMG
By 1974 with a world revolution imminent
Even in England [what with the miners,
the power workers, the 3 day week ]
Jane had come back
From one of those summer schools
For revolutionaries
Where you were spoken to
By accented comrades.
Ridiculous in masks and combat fatigues
But from amazing places
Where the world revolution
Was already unfurled
Like those beautiful raging banners
That had been designed for the Bolsheviks
Back in 1919
by El LJssitzky.
[the sides taken over Art
mirrored precisely
the sides taken much later
when disagreements developed
about the future of world communism]
Jane.
Her boyfriend,
the one that she was cheating on
for me in the weekday afternoons
had a gun
a revolver actually
oiled, loaded, ready
for the exact moment.
He used to get really furious
When he compared himself to Lenin,
Lenin at the same age, early twenties,
And what Lenin had already achieved.
Elsewhere, Edward Heath
Had called a General Election
And I wasn’t sure how to react.
The Liberals were the main opposition
Where we lived.
So did we vote for them,
If we were going to vote,
Or waste our time voting Labour?
Jane had already explained to me
That she was epileptic
She had Fits - and this - Fits
Was where she got her bruises
Not her boyfriend.
And I'd believed her.
[I'm not proud of this
but
if Jane started to orgasm
it used to frighten me
until I was
absolutely sure
that it wasn’t
something else]
Moreover,
When I gave Jane a
French kiss she often tasted of
sweet digestive biscuits, and I could never find any
in her kitchen cupboard. I've always wondered
if this was perhaps a side-effect of her medication:
She kept her pills on the bookshelf.
I can remember
Isaac Deutscher's Trilogy
the Pelican edition of 1905
and some other stuff
including Kate Millet
and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
behind
this long pink
twisted candle
that was there
purely by chance
as a consequence
of the power cuts.
I tried her drugs a couple of times
but they didn't seem to achieve much,
and we never ready know for certain
what makes the taste of other people
at the best of times.
We just kiss and hope,
hope that the other people,
don't turn away.
And Jane never did.
Whatever
That long pink
twisted candle
It fuelled our romance
quite perfectly, I thought
what with those kindly bourgeois flickers
that otherwise we might never have known
and definitely never have expected.
Either of us:
that was what we had in common.
It was sweet. Really sweet.
And then it was over.
Many years later
I saw this woman
in a movie
who was identical.
Obviously
It wasn’t Jane, but
She had an appendectomy scar
Like Jane
That the filmmakers
Had attempted to hide
With a black chemise
That came down
Some of the way
Over her stomach.
Jane.
Her boyfriend left the IMG
and joined the Labour Party
as part of the Bennite tide.
He ended up as a Councillor
in either Islington or Camden
and made a name for himself
when the revolution failed.
Jane stayed loyal
probably too loyal
if we use happiness
as a measure.
I would never have remembered her
If it wasn't for the scar in that foreign film
And the long pink twisted romantic candle.
But her boyfriend is on television all the time
Talking about New Labour, the Third Way
And what a difference Tony is making
to everything