Night falls, as night will,
out of nowhere and sprawls
black in the thick folds
and pooled gloom
of itself, and crawls
into every nook and cranny,
and frost will soon
crackle and slip over the surface
of things, slick over thoroughfares
and alleyways, paves, cobbles
and graves, while small moons
of satellites, passenger flights
and haulage flights patrol
each and every square
inch of the hard-starred
and static sky like pinhead
toxic blips that scour
the dark, scar the air.
Fast cats eat the dead
birds and foxes
rifle through recycling bins
while a bull-necked
baby bawls and hauls
a breast of milk from bed
and children dream of guns
and horses against the silhouette
of hills in the distance.
On a night like this,
it’s easy to forget little
we can do or say is likely to avert
fingernails being torn from fingers,
murder by hunger, genetic malice,
fuel terror that will tear the fatal earth.
But there can be no turning
our backs on a world that’s always turning
to tomorrow’s open promise:
maybe a quick death, maybe slow.
We may never know
more than the lovesick and pierced teen
who lips blue smoke in an upward
spiral from her bedroom window
raising wolf whistles from the street below,
but notice how people, like words,
ache to attach themselves,
unload their burden, tingle and tie,
fuse and flow into a music
that can only be heard
in gentle dreams.
Like books on bookshelves we lie
packed into terraces and towerblocks,
bedsits and bungalows,
listening to passenger trains
and haulage trains snuffle and cry
in the distance
bearing untold and heavy cargoes
into the terror and solace of silence
or, for all we know,
Hull, Bristol, Dover,
to set sail for greater islands
where the occupied already turn over
to embrace a breeze-kissed
morning and brace themselves
against the violence
without, the violence within.
On a night like this,
little we can say or do is likely to call
down the angels,
make the all mighty
change their minds and suddenly
dedicate their lives to the bliss
of their wives of many long years.
But to simply cave in
when tomorrow crawls,
as tomorrow will, out of nowhere,
and slowly lose all trace
of ourselves; to give up the ghost,
let ourselves fall
and all but drop off the face
of the earth would be to follow
in the footsteps of the family
man who flees his family in the face
of the air-strike to save
his own skin, to break free
and sink or swim
in the edgeless desert and dead time
of himself; it would be
never to enter the true city;
never to put our bodies in the line
of ringless fingers, the winds
of change, their piercing slipstream;
never to crack open our lovesick
and spinning minds
to feel the solace and bliss
of these streets where we wake to dream,
dream to wake. On a night like this,
it’s as if we haven’t seen
them all before: the hurt and the hurtful,
the hunted and unmissed;
legless couples locked together
singing long dawn songs;
singles who’ve almost
given up hoping to throw
their arms around anything but lipless
visions amid sirens and engines;
the flickering ghosts
of flat screens through windows;
the widows of the night;
raw girls in tartan minis and tight
t-shirts under lamp posts;
the breeze and litter’s side-street skirl;
the recently bereaved taking flight,
breaking free in the back of a black taxi
racing past slumpers and stragglers
ranting, raving, fumbling for a light;
past haulage trains and passenger planes
breaching the limits of the city
bearing untold and heavy cargoes
from Taipei, Mumbai, Beijing:
all lovers and loners, watchers
and wardens, captive and free,
waiting for dark skies to crack
open onto what will be.
This is what we know.
On a night like this,
the world, the poem, is a ring.
Move like a butterfly, and sting.