The
view from here
I
Fog
Newcastle has gone,
and Gateshead. A
fragment of Tyne
locked like an anchor
in mud
a few blue-grey roofs
some
street lights and steep
houses
chain it to me and
separate us,
buses form themselves
from air,
vanish to nowhere;
memory
is myth.
II Lucid
It rained overnight.
Black ashphalt
sparkles with pleasure
at being
walked upon, wild buses
play tag
to their destinations
always
leaving because they've
arrived.
I can see distant
green-brown
bounding hills streaked
with houses
and imagine tiny people
imagining us.
III Nocturne
Brighter at night
against the dark
the wealth and lunacy
of the city
reflected on the
surface
of the empty river,
still
great crack, laughter,
an argument
with my face in
Fenwick's window
till, by uneven steps,
I miss
the final metro home;
home
is fiction.
IV Sight
We are as ants and less
than ants
scrawling our sentences
like
scent trails over dust
each I a monarch
in its own domain;
quod scripsi, fecit.
