Leaving your basement
Barnaby Tydeman

There was a particular girl
in the crowd/ at the Half Moon, in Herne Hill/
looking at the stage, the waves/
in the living room, remembering the music/
inviting round the girl who read French poetry
on the streets of Twickenham/ watching Le Mépris,
with your art school; do you know how long it took
to get home, from nights out? To the backwoods/
it took deep into the light of the morning
into the next day’s emptiness
on the railway high above/ on the bridges of the Thames/
over Richmond Bridge, past those bushed back gardens,
do you know them,
and I thought about their maze/
how they broke up boredom/
how they were a landscape
abused and interrupted;

I had to leave my friends behind/ in their metropolitan/
in their connected/ in their deep-walled/
waking on their sofa/ in the sunshine, in the basement/
bored on my shift, at the department store, in Kingston;