Welcome to Donetsk

You teach me this wartime trick –

to look for living pot plants

in the windows on Kievska Avenue.

Most are crisped and brown.

But one green geranium

and a succulent spider plant

offer proof of life

for the person who waters them.

Whole apartment blocks are abandoned.

Collapsed telephone lines,

blown-up branches

litter the road.

No voices,

no tinkering metalwork in the distance,

no buses, no playing children.

Leaves rustle white noise.

You say, It’s like Sunday every day.

Stray dogs and swallows,

and the soft thud of shelling.