“Furiously, in the Northern Quarter”, Sam Hickford

Beside the concrete haze, you walked,
marking out your life in slabs
and stared down every monument
beside the broken trees, and kept
fluttering to an ancient god
buried in the summer light.

Curt presences by neon signs
weave into the scorches of cedar,
emitting their souls in satiric
gradations. Before the concrete haze,
the mist curls in the palimpsest
of the never-ending light.

This is no place to bury us.
We haven’t lived enough tonight.
I try to fix into my mind
the sweetness of a holy absence
dying by the concrete haze.