broken hisses & static, bird coughs; to begin, assess
things mentally one last time: the
blue waffle tiling is as it ever was, brown

base chest-high in oil gloss and
stencilled shrubbery fading in the upper half : pine needles?
they're verging on music, like
seepage of voicings down from
the dimmed lamp-heads. there is no
labyrinth & no chandos-hysteria, just

this aroma of language & fake carnations : this
window had no bars before, this
tag on the wall is new ‘Enter the'
derelict industrial park—herring-bone scorings in concrete.

Translated by Ken Babstock