after Ernest Hilbert

They sat there side by side: a homeless man,
a not-so-homeless-looking woman, talking.
Or he was talking, mumbling on and on
at her blank face, impassive, wholly lacking

expression or the smallest ghost of it,
unless you count the stitches freshly sown
up from her eyebrow, along her forehead’s height,
made redder by the paleness of her skin.

His face was folds of dirt and tan and grit,
impossible to see beyond these to
a person, though perhaps her gift was that
she saw a man in this man’s residue.

A sort of couple locked into each other
and shunted through the city, oblivious
to buildings, festivals and roadwork clutter.
It seemed they’d ride out to the terminus,

most likely so they could avoid the cold.
His drawl—his gravelled, drunken, ageing drawl—
sank down to nothing as the tram rolled
to a stop at what you could call Bum Grand Central.

He slept. She tried to wake him with some pokes,
but he was gone, almost decomposed
within his dream of drink or sex or smokes.
She made it out just as the doors were closed.