Neighbours
there’s no one in the flat next door
although
sometimes I can hear
the key turning in the lock
as they come to see if
there are any letters
or phone books
or to make sure everything is
the way it should be,
or to walk
the silent kitchen, bathroom,
lounge slash dining area,
bedroom, hallway and across
the landing
there’s a couple in their forties
with a daughter I remember
as a baby
who comes to visit
with her baby in her arms
I can often hear him
crying, or laughing, on the stairs
and the front door opening, or closing
and beneath
on the middle floor
is a limping old man
I can
hear him coughing his guts at night
or shuffling slowly out to his bin
and a woman
I post a Christmas card to
but I don’t know her first name
and
the old lady who looks at me
from behind her curtain
when I go outside
and on the ground floor
a man I’ve never seen
and who’s never seen me
and an empty flat where someone died
a few days, or a few years, ago,
I can
still smell her cigarette smoke,
and
the last man who tries to make
the communal garden look nice
and fixes the flowerpots when
they topple over in the storm
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2023. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2023 was Aoife Lyall.
Editor’s Comments:
We often know the least about those who are closest to us. In this poem we are granted a wonderful insight into the lives lived around the speaker: the unoccupied flat that is visited to ensure “everything is / the way it should be”, the woman “I remember / as a baby / who comes to visit / with her baby in her arms”, “a woman / I post a Christmas card to / but I don’t know her first name”. Reminiscent of the pandemic (though it is not mentioned here) the poem speaks to how we engage with, and pay attention to, those around us – be that from necessity, curiosity, a need for social interaction – even at the level of solitary contemplation.
Author’s Comments:
I live in a low-rise flat and had the idea to write something about how little we know of the people who are so close to us every day, how we never really touch other. We see them and say hello and that’s about it. We know nothing about their lives, and don’t seem to want to. It’s a poem about loneliness, isolation and unreality. Self-inflicted detachment. The far away sounds, the glimpses of another life. The uncaring modern world. All of the details are true. It’s bleak, but there’s a feeling of hope at the end with the man doing his best, still trying to keep the unrelenting chaos of existence under control.
