a retired sign language interpreter

who could say in the dust and ash and poverty
of the million tiny moments and decisions which

cumulatively brought him to this wet and solitary
place in a cul de sac somewhere in north Leeds

whether it was the breaking of a relationship he
had so tried to break without breaking or the death

and deaths of brothers or the constant repetition
of hand movements and the assumption of

a persona so unlike that he espouses outside
of such contexts but the real life one perhaps

imagines there in the lush grass exchanged
for this barren garret this gibbet this social

housing with broken things in what passes
for 'garden' in this new world already old before

he arrives. it has a small balcony from which
one may observe other, similar buildings

wherein similar breakings continue quietly,
generally, with little exterior fanfare beyond

an occasional smashing or roaring which soon
dies down or is sucked inside to invisibility

or perhaps transmuted into posture, gait,
the distortion of musculature, character

armouring, pathology, the inevitability
of ill health and depression. the balcony

it must be noted, an invitation to a rainy
pendulum into a dramatic public cessation

.