CORRIDORS

These are the doors of the corridors of my inertia.
These are my hands on the doors and the walls
of the corridors; the door handles, loose in my grasp.
These are the corridors behind the doors at the end
of the corridors of my inertia. These are the steps
that carpet the floors of the corridors. This is the down
I am going step by step, door by door. Corridors
after corridors. These are the between spaces
between floors and ceilings, between living and lives,
the corridors which curve like a flume down which one dives.

EVENTS LEADING TO A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

for JA

Once you have recognised the director miscast you

as Atlas in the school production of Fiddler, it is hard

to escape the burden of carrying the entire scenery

around on your back. I was holding billboards slapped

with paint by the Y9's, bits of fence used to disguise

where they'd missed and the MDF shone through.

The subject matter was heavy. Some Russian Jews

had been thrown out of their homes like rocks

chucked in the sea and I had to keep turning this way

and that to be certain the actors said their lines

in the right places. These were my responsibilities

that I shouldered alone. My parents were touring

in productions of Don't Look Back and Les Mis respectively.

I was cutting my teeth in the world of theatre,

though as I grew old I was typecast as Reb Nachum, the beggar

whom nobody listened to, who did not sing or dance,

just said a few lines to keep the whole thing moving.

This was who I was playing when I quit acting.