now the house has two alarms mine trilling
loudly by my ear like an excited lover
and then a second duller whispering up
through the floorboards from his bedroom to mine
it had been ours that room that sound but now
it is another country a new dawn
chorus and the dog running back and forth
between us like a messenger of peace
and hadn’t that same bell rung earlier
somewhere inside me urging wake up wake up
Andrew McMillan’s poetry collections include “Pandemonium” (Jonathan Cape). His debut novel, “Pity”, is due to be published in 2024
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This article appears in the 20 Sep 2023 issue of the New Statesman, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers