Truck

After

After the silent removal

after the silt in the drain

after all that you’d hoped for

deftly excised from your brain

after the cat’s been looked after

and the dog euthanized and the girl

who fed it on biscuits and munchies

quietly removed in a van

and after the garden is watered

and after the Rates are all paid

and after the roof is repaired

and the guy who’s been screwing the maid

and the maid make a suitable marriage

and their kids have all fled from the land

and after the land has been conquered

by carbon dioxide and drought

and the unions are running the government

beyond a shadow of doubt

and the price of energy’s rising

and the internet choking on smut

whose quality is as depressing

as the Stock Exchange in full rout

there will rise from the desert a something

we’d be probably better without

which will amble off into the cosmos

and turn the lights out

- Andrew Taylor

Ed: 'After' will appear soon in The Best Australian Poems 2011. 

Andrew Taylor is the author of more than fifteen books of poetry, the libretti of two operas, and the critical study Reading Australian Poetry (UQP, 1987). He was regional winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1986, and won the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for poetry in 1995. He was born and educated in Victoria, and has lived and taught in various countries beside Australia, most notably Italy, the USA, England, Germany and China. He is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor at Edith Cowan University, Perth. His most recent major publications are Collected Poems (2004) and The unhaunting (2009), both from Salt Publishing, UK.