I used a pin of mistletoe
to unbubble a group of seated men,
who smelled of pipes and musky tweed
and tied small bones with the hair of dolls.

‘These are the bones of yourself as a bird
and we are your cupboard uncles.
We will guide you down the ways of life,
taking the roles of all your loves
and show you joy and the hard in red
to make you forget your sins in cloud.
Now, my dear, it’s two o´clock,
time for nuts and scented oil.’

But I saw that they had the gaze of owls
and midnight crouched in their horny smiles,
so I fled to the house by a shadeless route
and stamped in every sky-filled pool,
surrounding myself with suns in drops.

Now ravens walk on the distant lawns
and discharge their calls in the moving air,
and still I see in the looking-glass
the unfortunate whistling face.

The bus is full and thick with fug:
we’re all bundled up for winter. I take a hankie
from my pocket and wipe the misty window.
A young woman standing at a bus stop looks up at me
and I’m back in last summer’s Luxembourg Gardens,

where a young woman standing by a hedge
drops her jeans and underwear,
bends at the waist and grips her knees —
a long rope of urine shoots out of her in a glittering arc
and drums loudly on the lawn behind.
I look away, but later wish I hadn’t.

The bus stops and everyone get out:
old women who can raise storms,
children who can jump and count up to sixty,
men who know the name of the next winning horse
and smell of smoke, mums with covered prams.
I may never see them again, but their breath
is tucked in my pocket, soaking my handkerchief.