Text

I am sending a message again.
Maybe you can’t hear it
through all the noise of lights
and the dangerous way things move
in that other city
where I think you are,
if I have the dates right, though
of course I could be wrong.

If you expected the message,
you would stand like this,
with your eyes open and focussed
on the screen, your ears closed.

The city I am in has lost
its volume control.
Every person in the place
is tuned to maximum.

Can you see the text?
Just to ask if you are safe
and well?

A phone shrills, a clock explodes,
in the next room, a TV switches on.
Everywhere, the sound of sirens, drills.
Cars screech, horns blare.

Where
are you?
Why have you stopped singing?