A New Career In A New Town

Call me Kid A, capitalising on 
my foreign-power language,
breezily erasing any thoughts 
of running aside to land here, 
finally, in this new town. Way
below zero I go, plunging into
a new career just as the Metro
escalators do, with no thought
or choice, only a strange drive 
to run, and run again, north. 

Call me Bowie, or at least his 
knife, cutting through forms, 
bureaucratic mazes, wintery 
shopping malls, towards a real
future packed tight as snow in
a drainpipe, or between rails. 
My plans to map the vortices 
of the city’s public transport 
take a backseat to idle wine,
to Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972).

Call me Yesterday, the prosody
of Vreten Tunnelbana station
piercing my southern naivete 
with its sharp blue cubes, its
friendly, if cold, silence. Here 
is a place I could sit for hours,
I think, looping through Low
(1977) towards another place, 
where non-descript bars hide
agonies, their private dreams. 

Call me An Economic Asset,
working my way through this
crowd of extras sent here to
test my resolve. Outside, all 
the trains are full of snow, or
maybe fluffy clouds. I wanted
to send you a photograph of
the view from behind my eyes
but the light, by then, was dim
and the daze had disappeared.