and flats, huts and slums,
for shanty towns, homesteads,
convents, yurts

for caves forming along the escarpment’s edge,
for tenements
and the semi-detached

we sigh for the God of the party wall,
the Inner Temple’s garden
and the school dining hall

we sigh for hospitals,
detention centres,
prisons and camps

for the sleeping bag under the Arches,
and barges and houseboats
and the stick nests of herons

we sigh for nursing homes
and children’s homes
and mobile homes

for the cardboard box’s
rasping Hallelujah –
its chords rising under our skin –

we sigh for boarded-up asylums,
the trampled Jungle,
for kindling and wind