That crack
                 in the wall is big.
And it’s growing. It must be.
It wasn’t there at all not so long ago.
I can visualise the whole front
of the house dropping off,
a thick brick slice, into the street
where, last night, the pavement
slumped into the basement below.

Three floors up,
                        my study
floats, oddly serene. I can hear
the tick of my joke battery clock.
I look out on the tops of trees
with surviving limbs. Yet
there could be, any day now,
a horrible falling away,
...