As the searchlights bandaged its dying air,
My mind burned with my city.

I watched my people wandering through colonnades
Of smoke, searching for the lost
Or for new countries.

The frontiers of my life have turned to fissures:
Beneath the elegant aircraft, like dancers, bombing us.
Only songs, not lives, have gained in value
Now that they are propped by broken walls.

In the last hours, recorded trumpets slapped
Through loudspeakers, at an unshaved dawn.
But it was not victory. The war just sank
In our harbour, with our ships,
My passport and somewhere to go.

Now, the birds will have returned. The grass
Over the ruins will be a beard around the sun.
New streets, like babies, kick and cry
Shaking off the dead.

But, like those beneath the fallen buildings,
Beneath the water in the shell holes and ditches,
I shall never return.

Perhaps I’ll find a new job today.
Perhaps the rain will saw up the sky
And help me as I slice the Moon into rings
And sell off the pieces from the back of a truck.