No sooner have I settled at a desk, or on a step, to write
I hear some argument in the street or from the garden.
Shared now, sadly, by the people who shout.
Shout to greet. Shout when departing and each moment in between.
Why pay for the mobile phone which dominates their day
It seems unlikely they cannot be heard. Far away.

I watched a programme set in Lahore. From there to Mumbai.
The poverty was a sin. Shrink wrapped in miserable heat.
Yet the cruelest strain was the absence of silence.
Still people manage to create, breed, sleep and eat.
Privacy must be borne from fatigue. Sound blind
Not deaf but unable to hear. Senses calcified. Ossified. Paralysed.

No sweat forms on their skin, there is no crust. Nothing cracks.
The temperatures crackle and another generation wither.
Within their shadows I sought solace to cool my envy and my pity.
All the while the people who shout continue. Shouting at their phone.
Shout about money, confirmation, deliveries. In need of medication.
Pointless, noisy declarations. In a silent town. Shouting even while alone.