SOUTH LONDON WINTER 

The trees bend in the wind like flinching beggars 
and the bus-shelter's letting in the rain. 
It's another dark South London winter, 
and everybody knows Jesus died in vain. 
That's just how it is. 
The supermarket checkout-girl's just unlucky, 
so as she scans my stuff she coughs the cobra's cough. 
Lucy wrote me a letter, pink crayon on blue paper, 
to say every useless thing we'd planned was off. 
That's just how it is.....