A postcard from Norrköping

(Such utterances

are of no help

to the stranger

lost in Norrköping.)

Sometimes I dream I’m a body

with no body attached.

However many times they show me my non-

existent lover’s smile I am inconsolable.

The child ate sugar

from a spoon.

The stranger lost in Norrköping

took no sugar in coffee or tea.

My lover gazes at the frozen sky.

She gives my hands a friendly squeeze.

“It’s a star raw night,

let’s go indoors.”

My lover runs to catch the bus to work.

Years ago she sent me a postcard

from Norrköping in whch she described

the cactus plantation in Carl Johans Park

& her encounter with a stranger

hopelessly, irremediably,

lost. I’ve been dead so long she maybe

thinks of me now & again, or

never - we were never close:

just that one night,

star raw,

frozen out of time.