Explaining the Evening News to Corbyn

                    after Ben Watt

I heard Caruso last night for the first time, I’m twenty-eight.
My stepfather sat me in a lounge chair
the color of rain on new grass,
and said, “Listen, just listen.” And I did.
Every time I express a fondness
he leaves an album out, a cassette tape by my car keys,
and with Caruso (like Rachmaninoff) it worked,
though I couldn’t help saying the obvious,
how similar he seemed to Darby Crash.
One day you’re eighteen in a freshman dorm,
gold and brown empties of Old English 800
crushed like metal cigarettes on the carpet—
The Lost Pilot is shaking in your hands.
Then it’s Cavafy in a bathtub with
cinnamon candles welding themselves to the tiles
and the sprinklers outside interpreting rain.
Did I decide then never to have a child?