Carol Ann Duffy
Room
One chair to sit in,
a greasy dusk wrong side of the tracks,
and watch the lodgers' lights come on in the other rooms.

No curtains yet. A cool lightbulb
waiting for a moth. Hard silence.
The roofs of terraced houses stretch from here to how many
months.

Room. One second hand bed
to remind of a death, somewhen. Room.
Then clouds the colour of smokers’ lungs. Then what.

In a cold black window, a face
takes off its glasses and stares out again.
Night now; the giftless moon and a cat pissing on a wall.
£90pw.