Holmes Minor

In your next letter, I wish you’d say
where you are and what you’re doing
how is the weather and whether
the good is any good pursuing:

treating coughs in the muddle of the day,
breathing as if it mattered much
when the days drone on and on despite
the drying out, the fading light, and such

and the streets are so broken, rife,
splitting apart in deep, sharp cracks
and upheaval’s just a faraway sound,
a warning drum heard after the attacks.

and an old man looks back from the glass
when catching sight of grey in your brow
and bootlaces are tied and untied,
and clocks tick, but you don’t know how,

and swapping out the dim of a workroom
for the gloom of home, the sooty street,
and the unconcerned glances of strangers,
the careless pity of those you don’t meet.

I don’t meet many, I’m afraid.
And dare you think my request most bizarre,
to post this letter, I need to know,
not what you’re doing, but just where you are.