The sleet is coming in and one
lone expatriate flake of snow;
the double-deckers hustle past
to Kidlington and Cuttleslowe.

Distance and death are on my mind
as past the Ashmolean I come.
The sky is closing in, it is
a collapsing auditorium.

I have my private glossary-
do not mean to read it here.
'A' for alone and 'B' for blind,
these are my alphabets of fear.

I'll need a place to dig within,
in any case I'll need a spade.
Tightening my scarf a bit
I hink of sleet and snow instead.

Sleet consonants to vowelled snow,
this language I must learn by rote.
A flake's soft hand upon my cheek
feels like a feather from a dovecote.

I think of her coiled foetally
within the corners of herself.
Dredging for grievance and for words
to define absences and blurs.
In my mind's eye I only see
her huddled and incurvatured.

Women with plastic bags swing out
of swing doors - I hate those sales.
I turn my mind to caravans
laden with fleece and cotton bales

crossing the Khyber from the plains.
I think of Indian evenings, shrill
with cricket and bullfrog-burp,
the banyan tree whose arbours fill

with rooks, as the last guttering light
climbs minar by minar rung by rung.
The evening is a salt-lick now,
I savour it upon my tongue.

I forget the sun's huge bloodshot eye,
the Indian twilight's fiery paints.
Streetlights are hazed with halos now,
a row of resurrected saints.

Head bowed, head scarfed as I walk back
the long entrail that's Holywell,
embrasures in medieval walls
come alive with pealing bells.