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I called it melamine
a kind of plastic crockery
assembled on a fold-up table
wobbling in a windswept
English drizzle
by a gorse bush
in a carpark
near a suicidal sea
in maybe late September
& when did your
last family end
only endure was
the start of a motto
I heard on the way
out of the door
in the evening
as days grew shorter
in my memory
& some announcer
tampered with the clocks
& who'll forget Wasserchafer's
very first translations
of Papùn
those tentative engagements
that always hovered
on the fragile rims
of that which had been baked
from leftovers &
left to cool on a second
storey window ledge
where worn-out windows
opened out into
the evening's violet diminutions
& Prussian blue expansions
tinged with traffic noise
small dog barks & stars
the nightly odes to
immortality & angel
delight that smells to me
like butterscotch
but tastes more like the valve oil
of the principal trombonist
the will to face another
autumn in these tasteful
veils of what for now
may pass
for mental health
in comfortable old shoes
now whispering with leaves
Cambridge, Sept 30th 2017