LONDON FIELDS

London Fields 

The night my girl flew to Paris 

the phone rang and I thought 

it’s her but heard the voice 

of a man I did not know saying 

I had fucked up and he knew where 

I was and was coming to get me. 

His voice had a Kray Twins sort 

of truth and sneered as I said 

I don’t know you I’ve never met you. 

I’m coming to get you he said 

I’m coming there to get you now. 

That we lived in a flat atop 

a large Edwardian home and thus 

I had two front doors between me 

and that voice was of some comfort, 

though not complete. Some days later 

when our old blue Triumph Herald 

was stolen the police found it 

a few streets away the wiper blades 

twisted oddly like the arms of a man 

imprisoned in a dungeon somewhere 

down the East End or so it felt.

I got casual work in Fleet Street 

left the Reuters building at dusk 

got off at Highgate. By the tube 

was a pub The Woodman where I drank 

a pint or so then walked the dark 

Queen’s Wood ten minutes to my door 

love poems in my head for my girl 

as I strolled beneath the trees. 

One night voices hard and close 

I heard two men crashing through 

the woods walking fast with purpose. 

Years later home in Australia I read 

of Dennis Nilsen a former army cook 

he had killed fifteen boys and men 

picked them up in The Woodman 

drugged killed and butchered 

buried parts flushed others fed 

entrails to animals got found out 

only after neighbours complained 

of blocked and smelly drains 

in his flat in Cranley Gardens 

at the end of our street. 

Larry Buttrose

Published in Best Australian Poems 2009, Black Inc., editor: Robert Adamson