The evening of his funeral the air was like pondweed.

The weather kept breaking

and breaking but nothing changed.

 

Sometimes in the middle of the day we heard

the unmistakable sounds of fucking through paper-thin walls,

the neighbour having an affair.

At night the foxes do the same.

 

It’s worse in the summer,

no breeze to pretend things are different.

You just have to sit with everything: listening

or pretending not to.

 

This year there are no insects. The air teems

with emptiness.

There is no word for the absence of a buzzing.

Just a sense of disconcertion, that something

which should be here has gone.      

 

Ah, these uncertain times. We remember a beauty

which can’t save us, we long for imperatives.