Cinema (Odeon or Capitol) circa 1959:

only no curtains, just an even, tight-pinned bedsheet

of timber, and a blunt, empty cockpit.

Nothing, it says, will come over your shoulder,

no hidden reels, throwing a hazy line

Across the smoke to play the rainbow fish

that slip around, behind, our watered eyes.

This is the board for unexpected news,

a death, a resignation, raw, cold

as the air outside, flat as the turned-down wish.

God, it seems doesn't live in water, glimpse and flash,

mirror and shade, not still until the day's

damp end. The message on the wires

rubs at the skin's impatient folds

in dry, pale itches, drifts of my neighbour's ash.

The most familiar artefact of brass and pine

nags at the memory; you know what's going to fit

the timber cabinet before too long, the drought

that cures the flesh and seals the blood.

Board: gate: departure, says the sign.

Off you go, then, on static-laden floors,

drawn - as we all are - by unwelcome news;

but even now, not able to pause

and listen for pursuing streams, rolled

shining and stuttering downhill to the exit doors.

· From 'Remembering Jerusalem', published by the Perpetua Press. The poem will be included in 'The Poems of Rowan Williams', to be published by Perpetua in October. Rowan Williams is the new Archbishop of Canterbury.