"No Joy in Mudville" (Gibbard, Harmer, Walla) - 6:03
Turning
Right where I should have held firm,
The car stereo's chime recounted
A long forgotten story. I headed west
Towards a doleful road;
Its single carriageway piercing
Dead, February-ravaged elms,
A world cast in frost.
The soft call of the xylophone
Played hop-scotch with my journey home
Home, rejecting order
To tread lightly on foreign memory.
Midday
Of song, my headlights,
Full-beam, stab the dark of night.
Light falls on your face:
Welcoming, among a crowd
Of pained statues.
The darkness will envelop again,
My dear, and again you will disappear
Out of reach.
This feels like the beating heart
Of a vascular emotion, its destructive vein
Etching a valley into a reluctant range,
An unwanted trailblazer. Rust streetlights
Mark the end of this detour. Ahead,
A familiar road - well trodden,
Fallow - and a red light.
Sanjay