Adapted for the screen

poem

Iris Shaw

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In the nevernight where all the living are

I, like others of my kind

Sit in empty rooms and dream

Of Isolation

Solitude Supreme

Surrounded by the blue-light ghosts

of all the friends I never had –

(For those born absent from this plane

Insert a toast, whatever is to hand)

And somewhere there is always light

And farther still the distant hum of silver beasts

Crawling up and down the roads at half-past two:

Cry silence, and it never comes

For all my black desires

Are written on my eyes;

And yours are there, and here they slink

Now quick, now blindly round my feet –

Here is time, and none at all,

Here is all the world, and not a soul.

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