Why – when you have
your two-bedroom flat,
a view over London
(from the kitchen window),
your black and white artworks
crated over from Brazil
up on your living room wall,
your grandfather’s watch,
fluency in three,
no four foreign languages
(all those books, all those
‘listen & repeat’ audio CDs),
a poem of mine in a frame,
my three telephone numbers in your mobile
for constant availability,
my shirtless body (and all the rest)
– do you stand up suddenly
in the middle of a non-birthday,
birthday dinner
(no candles, no cake, I promise,
not after the last time)
and look through
your kitchen window,
not at the view over London
but half-way
to the darkening pine trees
at the end of the basement flat garden,
and say I’ll get rid of this flat
and go to another city?

And I look out
past your shoulder
and see quite clearly
all your rooms to come
in all your changing flats,
city after city after city,
in all your unchanging darkness.