A tall lamp. My face I bear high
through the strange world, a standard.
This face from the Thirty Years War
it is ordinary, a copy of thousands.
The only one I have to look out from.
Faces like mine framed in this yellow hair
died in thousands in the firestorm of 1945
sent by your Bomber Harris. They died
the deaths of the snails, of the ants,
the woodlice they shared the space with.
The flies. Thank you. I will not take a drink.
Not now. Not this time. Perhaps again.