Gentle patriots of the suburbs whose faith
is an acronym for fibre access in the home,
where none means no one thing and news
the plural of new; all is flux, nothing abides.
Yet you reside, so rise from dinner parties, pause
your footie PVRs – it doesn’t rain like this in Astrakhan,
does it, Andrej? Zilch, Kelvin. Absolutely nada – and
gather in the barren bulbs of muffled cul-de-sacs to scan
the subdivided sky, modulated by the bit-stream flow
and low electric yield. The constellation of your faces
forms a dazzling array. Each swivels toward spare
signals as they travel on their cold way out. Unimpeded
as your unlit sons and daughters bedding down in
parks and foreclosed fields, ruining their pretty hair.