My aunt had gone to Paris for a holiday
and I was left alone in London with her flat
to promenade in Leicester Square. A drunkard sat
and played a dead harmonica.
The air was full of spring’s decay:
the pond ice, half-submerged and somewhat reticent,
uttered a groan for peace, a wish for winter spent
in hiding, covered by the light’s majolica.
And so I called a friend who said he’d come
to keep his company, and mine. Inside the dome,
the engines bled their passengers; a few for home
in Haslemere; a few to work,
with glances at the clock; and some,
like us, to play. The evening hid beneath the streets
and we ran slowly through the city veins, discreet
and fixed inside our trains, with silence our hauberk.
We climbed the night and drowned within the crowd
that pressed the pavement underneath the peacock light.
A woman’s laugh; the slamming of a door; tight
dissonance. Our casual hands
inside our pockets hugged the loud
green paper with assurance. We both knew the way.
We’d been there in our dreams, and on those lonely days
we’d spent chilling our white buttocks on the basement sand.
And so we climbed the stairs in silence, knowing that
this was a serious affair — a short crusade.
And, at the top, a woman with a pink Band-Aid
planted on her wrist smiled
at us. She’s just a little fat,
I thought, and handed her my money. And as I sucked
a foreign cigarette, I heard my friend get fucked
behind a curtain, with the moanings of a child.