Starry lives in Trieste,
a town with a name that wedges
into language
like a chisel

Gaudy smiles
like shirts out to dry,
like common house martins
on telephone wires in September,
gathering to migrate

sights of joy and melancholy

snarls and snorts of derision
blocking your headway,
words gushing sharp with resentment,
cold with the rainfall,
turning you sideways
into lonely thought patterns

TV-sets, automobiles
showing up in the daylight,
stop watches, clergymen, bailiffs,
supermarkets still shaking
with wares and forget-nots

the shrugs of the shoulders
dismissing all this and all that

a streak of light bleak across an Adriatic horizon