Books get everywhere.

Paperback

The stationary taxi-driver mouths the words
through his open window. He is not looking at me

but at his book, which yellows so that I can almost
smell it from here. He is not for distracting

even when a man, perhaps a customer, approaches
and shakes his whole body in emphatic conversation.

Perhaps the taxi-driver is obscured to me
but I get a sense of his impatience, so much so

that his position has not changed when I can see him
again. The novel is perhaps a King, perhaps

a Conan Doyle. It is not, I think, a Herriot
with a typeface like that; in a city, so far away, like this.