“London returns in damp, fragmented flurries
when I should be doing something else. A scrap
of song, a pink scarf, and I’m back to curries
and pub food, long, wet walks without a map,
bouts of bronchitis, a case of the flu,
my halfhearted studies, and brooding thoughts
and scanning faces in every bar for you.
Those months come down to moments or small plots,
like the bum on the Tube, enraged that no one spoke,
who raved and spat, the whole car thick with dread,
only to ask, won’t someone tell a joke?
and this mouse of a woman offered, What’s big and red
and sits in the corner?
A naughty bus.
Not funny, I know. But neither’s the story of us.”