Seven Years Later

There are words we would rather skirt around,
when the sky becomes an excuse,
or this arrangement of ducks across sloping cobbles
distracts from what we talked of last night.
We were only hypothesising, weren’t we,
about a society of amputation,
the whole bloody foreign situation?

At the turn of the road, rage between drivers
who, moments ago, were merely strangers.
From here, from this angle, the headlines
behave like a cliché, precisely,
read: ‘Everything is wrong.’
They have worn us down – or out –
and we have no more choice than
to reach for another bottle or shout.

Tom Phillips