I see you back on Grand Parade
The damp paving slabs, the traffic
Shadows on your young face
Your slim hands clenched
Air reeking of damp
Like now, it was November
I think of you after you’d finished work
At The Odeon, late
How you could still stay awake
And long past midnight in that basement
You’d put on a videotape for us
A snowstorm on an old portable TV
And I would always fall asleep
Even though your mattress was so lumpy
The descending shape of sleep
Let’s not call it a melody
More a downward unraveling
Matched the tightening in my chest
November, you walked so fast
Your raincoat flaring
As you slipped between the crowd
Vanishing down basement steps
With puddles on the ground
Glinting like the
pewter
Of dulled Georgian metalware
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