Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
Warm inside here, deathly night
Panting, 1 eye hard and 1 eye soft
tear-gas, air compressed and oxygen: 3 dumdums
serve as trochees of the vacuum
Bed that's been taken from the freezer, p.m.
trilby doffed, a flashback, second voice
It is the little things, folk say -
it is the little things: his way
of waving, gnawing like a den-penned animal
at left-overs, obsessions in his run
The loitering at contours of
a German ‘krimi' series, a little messing
on the side, cursing his cell, he who
fraught with fear can hardly leave his chair
At long last cancer in his guts
calls out for mercy: ‘Candy floss.
Piaf. Your stubbornness full-felled. Forgive...'
With hearts as trumps he disappears into the safe
burlesque humour-generous grief
his love pants after, leaky as a colander
For half a century years of smouldering
as if, vixen and badger, they were mortal foes
and doubly lonely in the self-same wood.