Like a bullfinch, after his cadenza, you stick your head out, to the open air

today the trailing straggling train of vowels

I like the undertows of contrabass before the sun works  the crowds

in coats, in harness, the single moving into the multitude

fading signs of yesterday’s  wards, asylums

along the up-down traffic of clatterring trams of gestures

You note the way a person ambles

but here, following my gaze, a youth, rising from a grey mass

simply steps in, crossing the door, into the foyer

like the first day of this city when one arrived

the City Road below shot through the ribcages

of a half-finished foundation

a whale of a construct wading in a gigantic open cut of silt and mud

in their helmets, ropes and suspensions, three workers quietly painted out the rust

from the rust-attacked concrete walls

the November sky shouted Vortex!

to the busy wild-west skinheads flitting tapping their platform shoes on the steps, along

the blazing doorways

In a room as if you’d owned, first sin of many, a full gulp of air on your untrained palate.