The Bright Dresses

After your addio - breathless, banal, the click,

Of the telephone, I came out into Corso Vittorio,

Emmanuele. Milan's glorious main street:

Rows of posh shoe shops, buckles and toecaps,

On tip toe behind thick glass; at the end of the,

Boulevard the cathedral spires like the tails of,

Old seahorses: rigid, brittle and upside down;

Sunlight all round me in a hot, close envelope,

With its smell of coffee and expensive briefcases;

Words on the air from the English lesson I had,

Just been teaching: "Sylvia never arrives late.

Tom loves pop music and small dogs."

This is the present simple for habit. It goes on,

And on I was saying. Then down the road,

They came: three bright dresses in yellow, pink,

And peacock blue, blurring to blobs of floating,

Colour inside the tears in my eyes. They jangled,

The words, advanced unbearably bright towards,

Me: Sylvia loves pop music. Tom never arrives,

Late. Small dogs. Small dogs. Never. Loves.