Sympathy, to begin with, is a problem.
The hotels are okay and there's free soap
to smuggle home. Lunches are not lavish

I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a terrace by the sea.

Many things will still change,
other flags fib and sing,
different ideologies may march—

Moonset at sunrise, the mind
dividing between them. The teeth
of the young sun sink through the breast of the cloud.

Scourging the sea with rods
To punish it for what it has engulfed.
Or running naked with your bronzed friend

They close the factory
They close the school
They point with fear

When I was regional
they let me have hands

If you put one leg
ahead of your body
balance on it and swing

When I was a child 
I brushed as a child
which is to say often 

King George the Fifth 
looked like my grandfather 
and felt as close