from At Dusk

Let me flee tick-tock time’s paralysis

and float through unplumbed time’s pure dead

brilliant book (not like a book when being read,

but like afterwards, when it swims in your head)

of interconnections. The clock looks so sad

because it always knows what time it is;

yet if time ticks on, let me not wallow

but face the facts, which cluster and collide from

one moment to the next, but never join

together as I toss small coins

at a homeless woman, and the next one,

then walk past the rest in a sham of shadows,

silhouettes, shopfronts, lampposts, car lights

leering like fluorescent chrysanthemums;

past the bobbling torchlights of mobile phones,

warm flat windows, third floor homes,

illuminated cyclists and the white wan

moon-holes on the thigh of a drunk girl’s tights.