Today’s Paper
(June 17 th 2017)

Inside, two pages mirror one another.
Was this clever
or was it pasted up without thinking?
On the left a charred facade, a fretwork
of long black oblongs, on the right
a lattice of photos, some blanks.

It is too soon, too cashing-in,
to write about the fire so here I sit
in a London park with pigeons round my feet.

Someone said once, avoid big themes
don’t do the Holocaust, but if you must
pluck from the Alps of hair
a single ribbon on a child’s pigtail.

Money keeps pouring in, nappies and blankets,
No more donations please, we have no storage,
it will all rot when it rains, but everyone prays
in their own way. I sit here on scorched grass
with pigeons round my feet, not writing about the fire.

Ann Pilling, June 2017