Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Is the night

Chilly and dark? The night is chilly

But not dark. An all but full

April moon

Slides above barely visible clouds, and is greeted

By a burst of hooting from an urban

Tawny owl. On empty

Brownfield sites they nest, and rear their young, and feed

On vermin. Has

Any

Probing, saucer-eyed astronomer, even a modern

Or French one, ever

Grown genuinely accustomed ‘aux profondeurs du grand

Vide celeste’? Someone halts, and broods

In the deserted doorway of a Chinese

Emporium, someone

Is struggling to rise swiftly

From his chair.

            *   *   *

A pair of empty

Curly brackets might have been

His colophon, I thought, parting one night

At closing time

On Great Russell Street, outside our last port of call, the Museum

Tavern. Between his thick-

Soled hiking boots rested a battered duffel bag with a single yellow

Shin pad protruding. A group

Of youthful party-goers sashayed by – one wearing a traffic cone

On her head: ‘like

A complete unknooown,’ a voice from the pack

Intoned … I was picturing the shiny black

Cab he so imperiously

Hailed whisking him west, revving, cruising, braking, gliding

Across junctions, the driver

At length twisting around, awaiting payment, as I veered

And tacked through the eerily silent

Squares of Bloomsbury, towards Euston.