The doors are closing in the late town,
security guards like priests at the locks.
It is private work creating a town
in your own image, the work of long days
of walking streets, watching leaves grow
and die in a fall of colour,
counting arguments, confirming new paint
on signs, smearing grey soot on red walls,
releasing the wild cats of your suspicion,
the tigers of jealousy, running from panthers
in the library of your memory, measuring
the long legs of this year’s girls and last year’s,
spreading your lies like soil on the cathedral,
looking for words to construct a loss.