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Text

Imtiaz Dharker

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?


Imtiaz Dharker

from The Terrorist at My Table (Bloodaxe, 2006), by permission of the publisher

Tags:

cities connection electricity isolation national poetry day 2016 sensations technology telephones

About this poem

One of the 8 poems chosen for poem cards distributed to libraries and participating schools across Scotland for National Poetry Day 2016.

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Imtiaz Dharkerb.1954

Born in Pakistan, Imtiaz Dharker grew up in Glasgow and now lives between India, London and Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014.
More about Imtiaz Dharker

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