Hypoversion

Clifford tells us of the unseen Blitz
buttoned into the city’s trousers.
As chambers, ports, libraries crumbled
like cake, felled dragons bellowing smoke,
silence in the bedrooms.
Those men left –
the wheezy, those just seventeen,
just forty-five, those with parents
juggled between countries,
those with vital jobs,
so lucky to have an excuse, lay
supine by sweethearts
as their skyline was pot-shot.

On nights where the sirens’ invasion
wasn’t too sharp, they might feel
a tap, a brush of breasts against the shoulder,
but the hand, lips, the firm, willing curves
would be gently pushed aside to grumble
and nurse a hunger
rationing shouldn’t touch
while their partner, healthy but for the flat feet
pinning him to London
stared at the ceiling: blank
and then suddenly covered
in a paper chase of embargoed photographs:
holes, pits, disappeared shops, jagged black logos,
all those snapped then seized by suits
for fear of letting on
that perhaps
the lights might not come on again
all over the world.