there was an old man

on the train from antwerp

no – sorry

brussels

and it had been raining

turning the fields to mud

we were waiting on the wrong bus

man tells us:

they come or they don’t

I wondered in order if he was afraid:

of being alone

of who he was going to see

of what exactly he had promised

to the night

 

suddenly city

highways, fortifications

expansion of sooty starbursts

clustered pockets of dwelling

 

if you go to the outer walls

climb the windmills

there, the fine lines

the city rolling outwards

into stiffer, peaked forms

 

three hundred years

quarantined arterial waters flowed

that feeling remains

a fever never sweat out

a sickroom never aired

a window half-open

that burst of the late stage feeling

approaching the moment of combustion