Once, when she was very small, a dream woke me.

Dawn, iron cages, a tiger and the eager,

little zoo keeper reaching out to pat it…

She slept soundly, her menagerie too:

balding princess, purblind bear, Mummy -

though not Daddy now nor, in the garden, Fido.

Oozing kapok, hair eroded by

loving, his one eye tarnished but keen like

small expectations, he kept faith by the swing.

Love’s unreason maintained such shabbiness -

and left him out all night. Barefooted,

I fetched him in by the handle. How love’s

confusion aches the heart!

Citizens falter in the purposeful street.

Above the fumes of money, confusion,

from the leaden gaps of sky comes a murmuring,

a sigh like breathing, pulsing of blood.

Swans are flying on unhurried wing beats,

necks as prows towards horizons. Glinting

like new coins, pedestrians’ faces

turn skyward… The city smells of warm stone.

Sun illuminates the prison’s granite.

Thrust through the bars of a cell window

are a pair of hands, palms upward. Whatever

they have done, those fingers, spread like wings, chill

the indifferent light…