They tin-opened his head.
Apparently it said
CALAIS across his brain
in red. Which should explain
the puzzlement and pain
and focus that he felt,
that afternoon he smelt
its fuel-and-fishy air,
then mulled it over in a square

like one whom little girls
untasselling their hair
in French and combing it to curls
adore when he’s thirteen,

who wonders what on earth they mean
and guesses and is wrong,
goes pink and carries on,
finds the ferry gone.