He took against

black and white photographs

and went on to reject

the present: the small ecstasies

of broadband bills paid on time, plants

re-potted as they should be.

Preferred to wallow

in the future:

to hang his hopes on

ideas no one has yet had

while wearing trousers

from the year twenty seventy-five,

to write himself prescriptions

for medicines uninvented

in an alphabet

that will be all the rage

a thousand years from now, to sit

in the corner of the room

singing songs that haven’t yet been written

about a country we’ll one day discover.

Kevin Higgins