Poetic Justice

Late afternoon in June is the best time to run
for understanding the architecture of a city,
when the roads are clear of contradictions,
things blurring in the distance

because they are far:
a landscape gardener or a police van,
a skip with a pram or a zimmer frame,
a line of trees or a histogram

and the sound of a bouncing ball
bouncing around the terraces.

We spend the day with one machine
then go home to another.
I don’t have the solution.
Just recommendations: books,films,

love, struggle, sleep.
We leave streams of pixels
on the pavements behind us, fallen
Christmas decorations.

Copyright © Luke Samuel Yates
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ABOUT THE POEM

“After Work” is from Luke Yates’ collection Dynamo (2023, the Poetry Business). The poem begins with a confident, specific statement about the best time to run “for understanding the architecture of a city”.

Exercise, urban planning and poetry do not necessarily go together. Larkin thought of London, “spread out in the sun,/Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat” (“The Whitsun Weddings”, 1964), but whilst doing so he was probably sitting on a train. Here the poet seems to be undertaking actual physical activity, and running becomes an almost appealing prospect because of what we can’t see – the roads are “clear of contradictions/things blurring in the distance/because they are far”.

Perhaps the poet-athlete is short-sighted and has abandoned his glasses (Larkin would approve of the specs), but the scene turns out to be mostly aesthetically unpleasing in any event (certainly the police van and skip); the histogram (a graph that shows the frequency of numerical data using rectangles) is a surprising inclusion, seemingly casually inserted at the end of stanza two and before another surprise – the sound of a bouncing ball (bouncing).

After such a burst of physical and poetic energy, stanza four collapses into its own disappointed exhaustion, and a realisation that in modern life there may be little separation between work and leisure. Despondently, the poet admits he doesn’t have the solution, just recommendations for books and films (with “love, struggle, sleep” artfully sneaked in). The striking imagery of the last lines contain both elements of hope and despair, as the virtual breaks into hard reality.

ABOUT THE POET

Luke Samuel Yates lives in North-West England. He has published two pamphlets (The Rialto, Smith|Doorstop), was a Poetry Society Foyle Young Poet on four occasions, and was selected for the Aldeburgh Eight. Dynamo is his first full-length collection. He is a lecturer in Sociology, and also teaches and researches political movements, technology, and consumption practices. His website is https://lukesamuelyates.wordpress.com/