Persephone
loiters among shadows
in subway corridors.
A rank breeze harries litter;
it skirls at her feet where
bundles of rags stir
in the foetid air.
Homeless' beats in her brain
to the roar of a train
always a tunnel away.
Happiness a yesterday
whose flashbacks tantalise
and flicker over frozen eyes.
On a moving staircase
she scans without interest
anonymous shapes which ascend
towards light as she descends.
One face, asterisked, seems
familiar. A smile gleams
in the tenebrous space
between them, then fades
as they pass. She recalls
another face,
two women walking by water in a place
where that year daffodils were early,
and sun splashed fields with colour.
Now on the river's bank
a red bull dips his head to drink.
His sanguine shade propitiates
the dark where memory waits.