…so have we been dead for a hundred years:

not heard of Donne?

Will anti-ruins rise? The natives love to squeal.

Piccadilly now a century of dust.

Today a day of canny ruins,

pyramids,

radiating sun.

A healing absence left.

Thoughts sear the page, then gone.

Yes we should write to make words disappear,

to seal a world of ruins.

‘Donne?’ the stand up poet said,

no luv, Donne’s dead, well gone.

Liz Callingham