I heard the song of a verse I knew and once knew, through time's vagaries it had been. Blunted now, but visible through the thin branches of trees like patches of blue that come on again with the winter, or the certain road-sound when someone swerves closely enough by the window on the street's side, when the rain has just ceased and remains lifted over the pavement, the pane's second skin. Surely, there will be weather such as this— surely the continent and the neighbourhood I dwell in is encircled by a cold, foreign front. Surely these words will be again, of the country, outbound, and in the making would have made plain their decision.