Shorter than the blink inside a blink
the National Grid will sometimes make, when you'll
turn to a room and say: Was that just me?
People sitting down for dinner don't feel
their chairs taken away/put back again
much faster that that trick with tablecloths.
A train entering the Olive Mount cutting
shudders, but not a single passenger
complains when it pulls in almost on time.
The birds feel it, though, and if you see
starlings in shoal, seagulls abandoning
cathedral ledges, or a mob of pigeons
lifting from a square as at gunfire,
be warned it may be happening, but then
those sensitive to bat-squeak in the backs
of necks, who claim to hear the distant roar
of comets on the turn - these may well smile
at a world restored, in one piece; though each place
where mineral Liverpool goes wouldn't believe
what hit it: all that sandstone out to sea
or meshed into the quarters of Cologne.
I've felt it a few times when I've gone home,
if anything, more often now I'm old
and the gaps between get shorter all the time.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem