November Rain

Broomhill's bricks are sweating with denial,
smearing the sandstone grey.
Students in bedsits are dreaming of colours
while the smell of tobacco is washed out
by the tired-eyed rain, and down below
refugees trudge through the misery
of Christ in the garden (Eloi, eloi)
and the steam that fills up the cafés.

Trying to find a missing word in a sentence,
sitting somewhere between frustration and beatitude,
I hide myself in the Nottingham House
and delete reality through ogling my namesake.
Something is happening, something is buried
underneath layers of rubble - but then the rubble
is buried underneath layers of rain,

and the world is turning into sleep
glimpsed through a window

like a bird
exhausted

When the rain ends, we are afforded
this sluggish tract of sunlight
impinging on the surface of the streets.
We would not be blinded by the world's incessantness.
Please leave us to the gloom of Christ's deliberations,
of cellars filled with darkness,
and of heads obfuscated
               by dying.