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