The silence of a late afternoon sun,
I thought as I passed you by.
If this were the beginning of a poem
I'd have said
It was the last late-afternoon of my life.

A sundown which you delayed
with your auburn hair and
your intense, beautiful face.
A sundown whose silence interrupted all
but the most resilient strains of despair.

The soft, rosy trompe l'oeil of a face
The soft, rosy trompe l'oeil of a stubborn hope
A fanciful version of myself
that I had to pass by.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and then turn back;
but you will have gone
like inevitability, like time...
like so many bombed courtyards and obliterated histories...
like that familiar kick in the teeth...
like all those slammed doors,
like all those erased possibilities...

Well then.
Close eyes, sigh, and walk on.

Looking up from the yellowing pages of Salman Rushdie's boisterous Bombay novel 'Midnight's Children,' I can't help being a little struck by just how otherwordly England is. How aggressively pleasant. A slanting ray of sunshine here, a fastidiously well-maintained lawn there, really nice ice cream, ducks and daffodils...An obstinate, resolute, all-pervasive pleasantness.

It can have been nothing at all. Like being run over by a tram of a featureless Sunday evening: crushed bones, a brief protest of the flesh...sweet oblivion. It can have been nothing. At all.