"This is the best time of the day,"
The taxi man said,
"Before those buggers go to work.
Half an hour's time
You couldn't drive down here."
"I wouldn't want to."
I replied, looking up at the clear air,
Signatured with vapour trails,
And wishing Manchester
Were Singapore or Cape Town.
Kim Helen James
January 1997
True,
they have seen more
than their age.
But in the hazy,
half morning
field of “stelae”,
we, somnambulant
observers,
select our optimal view
between the pages of the Talmud.
Coded,
In the text of your staccato voice,
there is,
our consensual agreement of being.
It is not quite,
the signatured artefact
of strict adherence,
more the oral history
of a recent past.
And,
having recorded
our verse,
concrete and solid.
You have in your mind
the route of discussion.
It is the briefest of tours,
and talks of lives lived
preceding these recent events.
We return.
The streets now awash
with preparation,
I commit to memory the impression of you.
I am conscious.
Limbs that will soon ache with fatigue,
alight from metro and tram
and converge,
on a morning
that is already spent.
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