The Last Note

I died in 1940, Wednesday night, a whistle then nothing, The flat folded into itself like a paper crane And I stayed in the brick dust, A chalk outline of breath Pressed behind the new plaster. Now the sun rises over a city That rebuilt itself without my skyline. Glass, steel, a thousand identical balconies Where no one hangs out their sheets and waves. And down there, Below my window that don't open, They move in a river of shoulders, Closer than lovers in a bomb shelter once dared, But no one speaks. Everything is contactless now. They tap their phones on little black altars To pay for coffee they drink alone in a crowd, No coin in the palm, no thank you, now. Just a beep and the next pair of shoes already stepping in. Hands that once passed warm bread to a stranger, Afraid to brush skin 'gainst skin... They pass right through each other without knowing, A hundred thousand close-enough-to-kiss strangers, Each wrapped in their own muteness Louder than the sirens ever were. No public weeping, no neighbour’s smile, Just a note typed into a box, That disappears when the screen goes dark. 'Cause they have all the light in the world In a six-inch screen. They rub shoulders in ways history has ne'er seen, A crush of near bodies that would have made Our wartime platforms scream, But each one is wrapped in a private silence, A hermetically sealed bubble of anxiety. Proximity without presence. Nearness without knowing. I press my palm to the double-glazing, It doesn’t steam anymore, Nobody lights a candle for the lost, They just swipe a little flame, And keep scrolling, on and on. Maybe I'm not a ghost, Maybe I’m the last note Of a song that ended when my roof came down, Still humming in the new brick wall, Waiting for someone to lift their eyes from the rectangle glow, And see the living standing... Right in front of them.