Mayflies

'Cycle lanes', the poet says. 'They're the sign'. He remembers cycle lanes appearing in Hulme. ('Hulme was a rough part of Manchester that was rebuilt in the '90s', he says, 'put that in a footnote for your readers'.) That was when old Hulme was becoming new Hulme, he says, which is to say, unrecognisable. He saw cycle lanes being painted on the roads. Uh-oh, he thought. Who was going to use them? Who was coming?

The new cyclists, the poet says, with their helmets and yellow jackets. The advance-guard of property developers and business start-ups. The new cyclists …

Manchester was becoming a European city, the poet says. A 24-hour city, my God! A bright, gleaming city. That's what it is today, he says, a bright, gleaming city.

He used to see them from the bus, gathered at the health food shop, the old Hulmers, he said. They'd sit out on the Oxford benches idly watching the traffic as it went past. They had all the time in the world, he said. He envied them.

Time was propitious for the Old Hulmers. There was so much time. They'd been given it, time, all of time; freed into it. The afternoons were their kingdom. They dreamed away their afternoons on the Oxford benches, rolling spliffs and watching the traffic go by.

Old Hulme, the poet says, like a lamentation. How can he get Old Hulme into my Danish head? How the transformation of Old Hulme into New Hulme, upon which everything rests? From Old Manchester to New Manchester. From Old Europe into new Europe, he says.

It was bad for everyone, that time, the poet says. 'They were hunting us down, every one of us. They were hunting us down, the long term unemployed, the long term sick … One by one, we we'd be caught and brought in …', he says.

'You'd get a letter', he says, 'calling you in. You'd be docked £10 from your benefits if you missed the first interview, and £20 if you missed the second. £10 or £20 for not joining their brave new world', he says, shaking his head.

The leaflets were dropping through their letterboxes, he and the other unemployed, he says. They read of funds set aside for the transition, for schemes to get the long term sick back to work. He was one of the long term sick, he says. He was sick of the world! Sick of everything!

It was time for them to be straightened out and reskilled, he says. Time for flipcharts and groupwork and the long road towards employment.

'They called us in', the poet says. 'Letters arrived, leaflets … Ah, they were friendly enough, the Job Seeker people. It was all first names and shaking hands, and we're here to help you'. It was all personalised service, the filling out of forms. It was all sitting with them at desks in open plan offices.

'They never kept us waiting long, we who had all the time in the world. They were always polite, respectful, we with whom no one had been concerned before. Jobseekers, that's what we were called now, not the unemployed. We were seeking work, looking for it, supposedly. And we always had been, that was the supposition. The pretense.

'Let's pretend, that's what we said, in effect. Let's pretend you really were looking for work, all along … That's how they changed the past. That's how they forgave us our pasts. It was the new ammesty. We were Job Seekers, now. Job Seekers who'd got lost on the way to the future.

'And now each of us had our advisor, our Case Worker', the poet says. 'We had Case Numbers. We were to sign Agreements. We were to present ourselves at the office to be retrained. Reskilled! – 'It meant flipcharts', the poet says, 'group work'.

He's sure Danes love group work, the poet says. He's sure it's all about group work and roleplay back in Copenhagen. Every Dane has a Case Worker, he's sure of that. A Case Number! You get one assigned at birth in Copenhagen, he says, he's sure of it.

'They had music playing there, in the open plan office. Distant music, calming, soothing. We were all to be calmed and soothed. It was going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay: words whispered to a sick child as you stroke its hair.

'We were to be reborn, retooled for the new world', he says. 'We were like nymphs looking up at the world with underwater eyes. Now it was time to hatch. Now we would hatch and dart above the water like mayflies …'

He looked around the office. My God, his fellow unemployed! His fellow absentees! They were a sleepy lot, he says. They looked dazed, red-eyed. No doubts their heads ached from the night before. There was always a night before, he says. Always a night before, and never a day.

They'd been asleep too long. They'd been asleep half their lives! They'd fallen asleep and woken to – this. Why bother with us?, their demeanour said. Give up now, their slouching in the chairs said.

*

'What was never understood', the poet says, 'what no one seems to understand, was that there was a kind of wisdom to us, the long term sick and unemployed. A wisdom that had accreted over the months and years', he says. 'A wisdom that had dripped down from the sky, forming us like stalagmites. A wisdom that had lain down on the earth over the millennia, like the tiny skeletons that make up coral.

'What had we understood? What you Danes will never understand, you who plan out everything in advance. You for whom everything is planned!

'We'd known five hundred kinds of boredom', he says. 'We'd seen everything, and the wearing out of everything. We'd lost ourselves; we'd discovered ourselves lost. We'd seen our reflected faces in the windows of night-buses. We'd ascended to the plateau of the hours before dawn, and to the plateau of dawn.

'What hadn't we understood? It was as though we'd lived a thousand lives. Memory grew thick in us like Molasses. Not our memory, but the memory of concrete, the memory of crushed glass on tarmac. We remembered like puddles lying out beneath the sky. We remembered like kebab wrappers blowing in the wind.

'We were lost', the poet says. 'We disappeared into the empty hours. We rode acrosss time like wave-froth on the deep body of the sea. Today, what is to happen today?, we asked ourselves each morning. And we knew the answer: nothing at all. Nothing in particular. Today will be exactly the same as yesterday.

'And we dreamt', the poet says. 'We dreamt in those days. Does the Dane have any idea of what it means to dream? Of dreams only the idle can dream? Of carrying vague thoughts in your head like fireflies? Of mist-thoughts that have yet to coalesce?

'We saw the vagueness of our futures like summer haze on the roads. What's the opposite of deja vu?', the poet says. 'Not I've seen it before, but I'll see it again? What is the opposite of a story? Of the succession of days? Nothing happened today, we wrote in our journals. Nothing happened. Nothing completed itself. Nothing was resolved. Life is not short', the poet says, 'but long, terribly long.

'Today is the same as yesterday. Today: that word turns in eternity. Everything that happens – every incident, every event – happens on the backdrop of the nothing-is-happening. Of the immensity of time, and the impossibility of stories. Of the river that silently bears all, sustains all and destroys all, like a Hindu god.

'You can't step in the same river twice', the poet says. 'Today is the same as yesterday. But the depth of the same! The depth of today, of yesterday! Those words ringing out like great bells', the poet says. 'Those words ringing out from the heart of time …'

'The same is not the same, that's the secret', the poet says. 'Only those unemployed or sick for years know that. That there are too many hours to inhabit. Too many of them, like the abandoned rooms of a house'.

That's what he saw in the people of Old Hulme, he says. That in the faces that looked up at him from the Oxford benches.