It seemed to be a house of women,
waiting. The thin girl in the basement flat,
consumed by love that knew her not;
the foreigner whose lover never stayed
the night (he had a wife); the girl
from Bosnia upstairs, waiting out
the Balkan wars; the girl in the glass
studio, held hostage by her silent phone;
the old woman from Smyrna with the wayward
son, who would return for respite
from amours sauvages in Tunis, Rome;
the whispers of a winter night, the summer
courtyard's welling sighs, the feral cats
beneath the lemon trees, wailing of infamy;
shutters of the basement flat hooked back
to catch each sound, the light,
a glimpse of feet through curtain-lace
that might become a voice, a face...