Recall

On the thirty-ninth step,

Mr Memory (for it was he)

Realized that nothing mattered

Anymore,

And that Winnipeg

Was no longer a city

In Canada;

That Tokyo had taken off

And landed in Alaska;

Moscow had become Vienna

And London had flown.

Time lay abandoned,

Its future unknown.

He watched the gulls

Circling,

Or thought he did,

Because the sky had fled

Along with the land;

The wind had given up

The ghost;

Nature lay silent

And, in some freak collusion,

Poetry had become prose.

Mr Memory

Left the world naked,

Much as he’d entered it,

Leaving no epitaph

Or forwarding address;

Just one more enigma

In infinite space.

Me & You

You wake up

As Anthony or Cleopatra,

But appear quite normal on the bus.

At work, truth is waiting;

You scour emails for love.

Your greatness goes unnoticed

In the canteen at lunch.

In your dreams,

As all of us,

You are the one.

At night, you keep vigil,

Imagining a time,

When magic happened.