The Lift

The Lift by Alan Franks

Winner of the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2006. Judge, Don Paterson

And so once again I’m in the ancient lift
That still succeeds in rising by force of habit
Here up the shaft in the heart of the mansion block.
Easy to think it had died in the intervening time
By lodging lethally in its throat of masonry,
Or else simply expired with the futility of failed missions
And all the later ascents into unachieved memories.
Because of the carpeting, always so fat with underuse,
And the solid, unhurried architecture,
The world beyond remains unaware of just
How loud the trellis splashes back
And falls into itself like a pile of metal mattresses,
Also just how great the gap can be 
Between the button being pressed
And the clunk with which the cage begins its upward shunt.
In this gap, before the flux, on days like this,
With such a distance still to rise to you
And the deferred eternity of your kisses,
The universe breathes in and out a dozen times,
Expanding its boundaries, then vanishing in its core.
The current groans like a shocked heart
And down in the base of the well are gathering
The ghost-worms of Edwardian electricity.
Up it goes, slow mechanical mercury rising in its capillary.
A muffled call comes from a town church bell
And a sharper little chime from the first floor flat.
On the second a phone is ringing untended
In the empty import-export premises.
A dog is yapping through the ceiling, above which
The French tutor, Madame Gourcuff, is shouting at her lover,
Above which the widowed diplomat dictates his memoirs,
Above which above which above which
Until the storeys end and I am once again
Aware of the thinning air, the diminishing roofs,
The broadening view, the beginnings of fields,
The curvature of the horizon, the banging of my heart
At the bars of its free hanging cage.