‘Love and war are the same thing…’
— Miguel de Cervantes
Somewhere over the tiled foothills of our council estate
A man and a woman are arguing.
The focus of the argument is something brutally trivial
A TV programme choice, that sort of thing,
Yet the air is a hot Isandlewana of big and small wounding
And a silence follows, with one avoiding the other
While the battleground wounded are hauled away.
Unremarkable people go to war like this, see the fracture
In the fence and tear at it
Making broader access to unremarkable places
Left unguarded. (Who slept on duty?)
In a soft sofa-ed sitting-room shouldered by cushioned
Chairs, people of the utmost respectability
Shoulder their Martini-Henrys and enfilade whole swathes of love.
