The worse horse is war.
4 am rain still dripping an hour after the rain.
Collapsed architecture, dead mouths, 
succulent wastewater. Eyes 
traverse a lasting impression.
Headlights fishtail, the moon’s rind falls.
Imagined eyes rolled up like shop 
blinds, limited incursions into the
shadowy rest of history.
Statues bleed shadow before the gate.
The soil vomits out of the European 
theatre daffodils and bones.

Giles Goodland’s books include  Of Discourse (Grand Iota 2023). A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001)  Capital (Salt, 2006), Dumb Messengers (Salt, 2012) and The Masses (Shearsman, 2018). Civil Twilight was published by Parlor Press in 2022. He has worked as a lexicographer, editor, and bookseller, and teaches evening classes on poetry for Oxford University’s department of continuing education,  and lives in West London.