The embankment towers above us

Boxed into polystyrene pyramids

A maze of stored imagination

Pathed into Monomatapa alleyways

And Great Zimbabwe stonework

Where all we have left is the emptiness

Of starvation and an earthquake's leftovers

As the tower tumbles down around us

Harmless and unhurting

Like the blocks of childhood

Tantalising the architect

Just to begin again with nothing

Designing a bulwark for the future

Protecting our own chaotic space.

24 February 2006

Written on the Chislehurst train, after visiting the Tate Modern with Andre, viewing Rachel Whiteread's sculpture in the turbine room. We'd just had news of the Mozambique earthquake.