Fourth collection from the York-based poet. Then the
President asked:
Why won't anyone
talk to me about Death? There was
a long
silence. I will, I said
stepping
forward. The gilded
room
drained of
lackeys,
bodyguards,
hacks. Then we sat
alone
and he leaned
close,
eyes wide, like a child
listening
to a bedtime
story. When we last
saw him
silhouetted on
the dawn sky, the President
was
a seething
pillar
black with
flies from capital
to base;
and the bitter
air all over our land tasted
something like hope something like
expiation something like
grief.