Wye Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Sunderland Nocturne) Poem by Paul Walker

It’s 4am and I am midday awake.
The pair downstairs are fighting again.
They’re a regular Punch and Judy show:
she slaps and he wails.

But it wasn’t their row that woke me.
It was the pop of a petrol tank
exploding in the next street.
I couldn’t see it,
but I know that sound as well as
a gardener knows a thrush’s song.

Then the police copter shone
Its cyclopes eye through the curtains;
Its sin-rays fired-up my day drive
and my mind started running its loneliness
program again.

And you are still five years away:
Down one hundred and twenty miles
of train track.
In another city.
Breathing, sleeping, dreaming.