Activity

a wispy breath of mist now seeped from the terraced buildings, from the rooftops with their vague crenellations…

They adore poverty. And cold and damp and discomfort. And dirt. One mustn’t forget dirt. It’s called mendicity. It’s meant to uh, to relieve you of distractions from your full devotion to God.

This is a language novel, written in a futurised farrago of Romani, rhyming slang, and Russian

Knowing how far I was from the child, the halfmade pupa, and how far I was from the adult – the finished imago.

The poet is taking the train from the north of England to the capital on Whit Sunday, the Christian festival of early summer, traditionally a propitious time for marriage.