Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. In this extra episode, Jory Graham reads her poem, To 2040, published in the latest issue of the paper.

To 2040, with whom am I speaking? Are you one or many? What are you? Are you? Do I make myself clear?

Is this which we called speech what you use? Are you a living form such as the form I inhabit now letting it speak me?

My window tonight casts light onto the snow.

I cast from my eye a glance, a touchless touch, tossed out to capture this shine we cast.

I pull it in, into my memory store.

I have lost track.

It snowed for more than we'd imagined at the start.

It began. Unexpectedly it began. I. It snowed for more than we'd imagined at the start.

It began. Unexpectedly it began. It did not really cease again. It slowed some days. Melted as it fell on some. days passed through snow rather than snow

snowed melted as it fell on some.

Days passed through snow rather than snow through days.

Did it remember us at some point when we could hold no more memory of day in mind?

We had started with minutes.

We had loved their fullness, cells flowing through this body of time, purging all but their passing through us and our letting them flow through.

But then they stopped being different.

You couldn't tell one minute from another, or an hour, day, year.

Years pulled their length through us like long, wet strings, and we hung on to them.

They strung us a ways along and up. They kept us from drowning in the terrible minutes.

Once I sat down and cried as I watched the sun come up and the flakes falling as if not noticing the movement from night in today.

At least let there be difference.

Otherwise, whatever remains of desire will go.

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