Tears

Trickled

        Down her cheeks

        At the sight of

               The empty stocking,

               The house, unvisited.

                      While, next door, Father Christmas

                      Looked at his watch, zipped up his bag

                     And roared home for breakfast in his Jag.

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It’s quite the fashion now to bash

Those journalists who seek the truth;

As years flow by, more are cut down,

Or languish, silenced, in their youth.

As humans they are fallible

And are rebuked for their mistakes,

But hard men seek to shut them up

When they play for the highest stakes,

And can’t afford to be faced with

Exposure through detailed research,

To ...

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The fractured walls of wickedness in war

Are on display each day at any time.

The morning tittle tattles rise and fall

And poets churn out verses in sweet rhyme,

But somewhere, here or not so far away,

A child is killed by missiles from above,

A mother grieves for her departed son

And husbands weep for what they think was love,

While no one makes the evil men account

For...

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You don’t need much brains to share a tweet

(Tech Bros will help you if you can’t).

Just flash up vile messages on your screen

And give them a big MAGA slant.

Insult a battered country and its chief,

Say that his time is almost up,

And inform him that all future funding

Will be dropped in a paper cup.

Here’s what the tweet said, in more precise terms:

Ukraine’s...

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I’ll show to him the courtesy

He never showed to me;

I’ll meet him at the White House

With no conspiracy.

I’ll help with the transition

In ways he never did,

And will not throw my toys about

Like some spoiled teenage kid.

And won’t pretend we won the vote

Or claim to have been cheated

And will not start a riot

Because I was defeated.

I’ll shake hi...

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With their grunting and their oinking,

They parade around the pen.

For all their affectations,

They’re the angriest of men.

Their litany of grievances

Spawns shrill dishonest whine;

We’re living in the conman’s age,

This is the time of swine.

They soil your information

To camouflage their faults;

All traces of wrongdoing

Are locked deep down in vaults.

They...

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Let’s ease up on the green crap,

The climate’s not too bad;

Some summer heat in winter

Should make us feel quite glad.

Ditch all the regulations

That pessimists adore;

Give people what they dream of:

More flights, more stuff, more, more.

Rev up your petrol guzzlers

And roar down country roads;

Let’s motorise the planet

Through trucks with monster loads.

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They call them the disruptors,

Trump and Musk and Co.

But what do they disrupt?

Not themselves, oh no!

Not their balance in the bank,

Or property portfolio.

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Never mind the wounded,

Never mind the dead;

Shake hands with the cheeky chap

And pat his shiny head.

Never mind the blood

That’s dripping from his hands;

Kneel right down and grovel

In front of where he stands.

The cheeky chap is on a roll;

The BRICs are dancing to his tune.

A warrant waits for his arrest,

But might as well be on the moon:

For t...

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He does not wear life

As life should be worn,

And seems not to think

That we should be kind,

That people need hope,

And not resentment,

That honesty wins

Over packs of lies.

If he gets the nod,

We are all losers.

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The trees begin to wilt and fade;

Another year is on the fall.

Though autumn can defy the odds,

The winter’s cold is bound to call.

The daytime’s relegated role

Is limited to minor parts;

Discarded leaves drift down to earth

In patterns of the purest arts.

In nights replete with cloudless chill,

We shiver at the crisp-cut moon;

The powdered snow beneath our ...

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At every corner of the world I turn,

I come across the stink and shape of death

And dodge the battered buildings to keep safe.

Yet still I hear the noisy men of war

Talk euphemistically of grades and gain,

Assuring us that all they want is peace.

Sad to relate, that treasured bird has flown;

From this time on, our God is on his own.

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You may have the misfortune to

Live upstairs from or right next door

To somebody they want to kill.

It’s not your choice; you have no voice

In whose blood they would like to spill.

And, being close, it could be you,

Who sees the bomb fall through their floor.

No one's fault. The luck of the draw.

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They munch at scraps of bread

And gulp their meagre drink;

They borrow someone’s phone

To make one final call,

Then scrape up what he asks

To squeeze into the boat

And shiver as the sea

Sets out its fearsome stall.

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We don’t have much time; sooner or later

This planet of ours will hit the buffers.

By then weak excuses or fake facts won’t work,

Nor saying: ‘well, it’s always been like this.’

Hot air is no defence against the heat;

The war, unfought, starts to flex its muscles.

It seemed so different the last time round,

As smiling faces sauntered on the bridge,

Seeking the usual gl...

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In the language of communiqués, we say:

‘We will do whatever it takes’,

But in Kyiv, Kharkiv or Kramatorsk,

As nighttime falls and warheads once again

Wend their way between wide-open cracks,

The heart of one more mother breaks.

And our reply? ‘Look at the big picture;

This sort of thing is anecdotal.

A tiny fraction of the total.’

Pah!

From inside each plus...

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What are we fighting for?

Ukraine will win this war.

By gambit or caprice,

Ukraine will live in peace.

Though enemies have tried

To dent a nation’s pride,

Their onslaught is defied.

Ukraine will win this war.

Though cities crash and burn,

The displaced will return,

And conflict will adjourn.

Ukraine will live in peace.

For freedom will prevail

...

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Maybe my enemy enjoys a joke,

When seated round a table with his mates.

I can believe that he’s a decent bloke,

Except when the demand of war dictates.

Perhaps he likes his football at weekends;

His mother might still bring his cup of tea.

Yet now it’s captured land that he defends,

And if he’s ordered he will shoot at me.

Our paths may well have crossed when we w...

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Time poses as a ticking god

Engaged in forward creep,

And is revered by billions

Who rise, work, love and sleep.

But time is mere illusion,

Predictable and crass;

Relaxing on its lounger,

It makes us look an ass.

We race to catch the morning train

And stay late for the boss,

But when we need the slightest break,

Time will not give a toss.

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I took one in the back,

And fell down on the ground.

I sought a friendly face,

And saw one that I knew,

Approaching me at pace:

A pal from student days,

Now on the other side.

‘I’m not to blame,’ he says,

And shoots, in the same place.

‘It’s business, it’s not you.’

His words seemed quite profound,

(I don't think I replied)

Yet they took me aback,

As I lay th...

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The clowns and the madmen are led away,

Kicking and screaming, kicking and screaming.

The brand-new Bentley is brought out to play,

Factory-gleaming, factory gleaming.

The streets are swept free of the dust and muck,

Spit-clean and polished, spit-clean and polished;

Around lies the city’s ardour and luck,

Smashed and abolished, smashed and abolished.

As simpering rules...

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Turn out in November, don’t hesitate;

Sit on your hands and it may be too late.

Scruples don’t mean you just sit and observe,

If you want the President you deserve.

Though candidates will never be ideal,

The better one seeks to rally and heal.

To occupy the White House is to serve,

Choose wisely the President you deserve.

Respect for democracy and its ways

Shou...

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We feel bad about our provocation;

We didn’t mean to cause you such upset.

Of course, you are innocent and blameless;

Our troops were only sent in for a bet.

Our little strategic incursion

Was even-handed and sincerely meant.

There was no wish to violate your borders;

No malice was contained in our intent.

Wait a second, though! At provocation,

You’ve shown you...

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I’ve got the perfect excuse:

I wasn’t there, I am too young,

I don’t speak the language,

And would have been too far away.

Perfect, but nothing like good enough.

In life’s harsh light, we were all there;

Young, old, dead, alive or unborn:

We all know what happened.

Condemned to be cogs in the machine,

Nobody can do the dodge now;

No one can hide and say

‘It’s nothi...

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Every performance celebrates new life,

Since music will outlast our mortal form.

The melodies which freeze us to the spot

Will still resound for centuries to come.

Achievements mount to places up above;

Responses should be equal to this height.

Cheap adjectives will never do the job,

Mere emotion doesn't give an answer;

Shedding tears is just a modern fashion,

As is howl...

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It’s never going to work;

You do deals with the tough,

But soon he’ll cut up rough

And do his dirty stuff.

He just can’t get enough.

He’s never satisfied

Until your flame has died,

Snuffed out by his dark side.

By then his grin’s as wide

As some cream-licking cat.

Though preaching peace and that,

His word is worthless tat;

He’ll rase your homeland...

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A gracious, shrewd commander,

He was one of America’s best.

His courage and his honesty

Raised him up above the rest.

Now is the time to pass the torch

To a sharper generation,

To keep alive his legacy

And take forward a great nation.

For spiteful, ugly ideas tread

Upon Washington’s hallowed ground.

The politics of angry lies

Risks engulfing all around.

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It wasn’t President Biden;

It wasn’t the FBI.

It wasn’t that old actor,

Or some TV anchor guy.

It was a loner with a rifle,

That he borrowed from his pop;

And once again America’s dream

Is the nightmare that won’t stop.

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On summer evenings with not much to do,

The wind blows, soft enough to hear my words.

I ask the wind to bring relief,

I ask the wind to feel my pain,

I ask the wind to understand.

But the wind does not reply.

Yet, deep in private moments,

The wind knows more than you or I.

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He waddled his way to the Kremlin

As some kind of honest broker,

But anyone watching the horror show

Viewed him as one sick joker.

With his huff-puff of lies and flannel,

He claimed that he came in peace;

If only Kyiv would listen,

The bloody destruction would cease.

Then just a few days later,

Ukraine suffered thirty-plus dead;

Idiots can sometimes be usefu...

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Oh, those fantasy days

Of narrow houses, long gardens,

Backing on to the railway line,

Where passengers marvelled

At the symmetry of washing,

Doing its flappy each-way act.

The vegetable patches

Gobbled up the dust and grime,

And smiles were extracted

From the school of hard knocks.

At sunset, big, proud men

Would contemplate their lot,

And bow sun-fired heads

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They are a singing, swinging crowd,

They chant their slogans brash and loud,

They go as far as is allowed,

And, in their daydreams, further still.

They sip champagne and spit their bile,

They chuck their rubbish on a pile,

Yet, when the cameras roll, they smile –

Although a tad against their will.

They smooch and stroke and clap their hands

To music from some h...

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Some people say home’s where the heart is found;

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the being there,

The rooted opposite of somewhere else.

Fond memories may have tipped the scales

In favour of this slow, contented place:

The local shops, the chatter’s usual sound,

The morning stroll to coffee on the square,

The precious banality of passers-by,

Though each slab of this ecosphere wi...

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You were sure of entertainment

With artists who cavorted in the buff;

The narcissistic footie fans with phones

Are made of much less sterner stuff.

They amble on and look for snaps,

But they will never capture any hearts;

Their naked predecessors could turn heads

By flashing tastefully their parts.

An age of innocence has gone,

Of Erika, and Michael Angelow;

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‘Look at the big picture,’

Cried the man in the suit.

So I took his advice

And ignored the sniper,

The stiff, the nightly raid,

The trivia of grief.

I turned to the summit,

Its polished chandeliers,

Its underarm hygiene,

Its on-tap refreshment,

(‘Still or sparkling, Madam?),

While, in the dregs of war,

The uninvited crouch

And hope the shells will miss.

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‘A truth denied is truth decried’,

I once heard some wise person say.

But what if truth is optional,

Or fuzzy-edged or ill-defined?

(The point seems rather underlined).

Then how differs fact from fiction

On this or any given day?

There is no future and no past;

It’s just a matter of control.

What has happened and will happen

Depend upon our latest whim

(The pr...

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Let’s hear it for these little men,

Let’s hear it for the pompous twits;

Let’s hear it for their backward views,

Their entourage of nasty shits.

Let’s join them turning back the clock

And pumping rubbish in the air;

Let's make sure their election day

Is anything but free and fair.

Give them the room to swagger on,

As they bash human rights and gays,

And stru...

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I remember the old dictum

About having to break some eggs,

But don’t recall the guided bombs,

Great cities beaten to a pulp,

Or blowing off somebody’s legs.

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A magnet hung in the big, bright store,

Between the household and the sport,

When down came a pair of guided bombs

And more innocent lives were cut short.

Far away across the border,

Pampered strategists play chess;

They do not know the victims,

And are bothered even less.

This is the new reality

Of war devoid of shame,

Where women, men and children

Becom...

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The naughty little boy:

He likes to roam around,

Invading foreign ground.

Harsh methods he’ll employ,

The naughty little boy:

He measures out the soil

That he intends to spoil

Or preferably destroy,

The naughty little boy:

A foe who stands alone

Is butchered by a drone:

His brand-new, shiny toy,

The naughty little boy:

No opposition views

Are broadcast on ...

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We bathe in contradiction for a while,

Which harshness of proximity creates.

Magritte did not intend to reconcile;

Stand back or near, the viewer still debates.

Where does the darkness end and light begin?

It seems as though the night should not be here.

Yet lower down, the slowly gaining gloom

Sucks out illumination from the room.

Outside, a lamp burns weakly in its f...

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Perhaps the closest we get to music:

Uncluttered, pure, free from excess.

Their simplicity can be deceptive;

In reality, nothing is simple.

Everything, however, is deceptive.

Maybe that’s the way it is meant to be;

We must be deceived by their deception,

Woven by passion, not by intention.

These pieces are not innocent, of course;

Beyond a lilting theme of hope and ...

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We have become defined by war.

Two years ago, we had the love.

Builders played and danced to our tune,

This fantasy world embraced us:

Plucky sorts, hung out for applause.

Now we are just part of the kitsch.

Since that time – more dead, injured and burned,

But not only that. Deeper marks

Have eaten into Free Ukraine:

The tears of a vanished childhood,

The shame of shr...

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There’s the old smoothie, turning on the charm.

Hunched behind his desk, far away from harm.

He doesn’t seem to care or give a toss

About the lives that he condemns to loss.

There’s the old smoothie, targeting Ukraine.

Oblivious to death, amused by pain,

He knows the masses have nowhere to hide

And are fair game if they live on that side.

There’s the old smoothie,...

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With our hearty supermarket habits

And ways of democratic self-deceit,

We dodge the bullets to the ballot box,

Accepting our predictable defeat.

Brought up on true sportsmanship’s traditions,

We learn to take reverses on the chin.

We fight our corner and we know our rights;

We also know that we can never win.

In the eyes of those who hold the reins now,

There i...

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Are we allowed to be afraid?

Is it compulsory to fight?

Many would choose to be elsewhere

When faced with a foe and its might.

Are we a traitor if we leave,

Or a patriot if we stay?

It is no shame to show contempt

For warfare, and to keep away.

And ‘pacifist’, that grubby word

That hardly dares to speak its name?

Why should we join the ranks of hate

Or pl...

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In New Wave days and times of Kitchen Sink,

The Club could seem the centre of the world.

Spent workers went inside to swallow drink;

Tempers might flare, cheap insults would be hurled.

Booze sharpened anger, retribution swelled,

As unattended wives would cast a glance;

The sum of all emotions was expelled

In cold revenge with little left to chance.

And there’s a h...

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It’s clever how they’ve set this up:

A bowl of fruit,

A jar,

A china dog,

An iron bar (an iron bar?)

Behind – some crumpled remains,

The stench of rotting heaps

Of defenceless women and men.

Still, no one can see or smell this,

So that’s all right then.

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That was once our view.

It was my perfect view;

Out of the blue, a tree grew.

From then, there was no perfect view.

After that, our lives closed in,

And you, with your arrogance,

Your new-found taste for sin,

Plus your innate flair for spin,

Emphasised the symbolic side

And, harking back to sweet evenings

When we listened for the early owl,

Became impatie...

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Give us all your money,

Then go and find some more;

Try borrowing from loan sharks

To maximise your score.

Steal it from the corner shop

Or from your parents’ stash;

With every tempting wager,

We’ll part you from your cash.

Your chances of a pay-out

Are vanishingly thin;

You might as well take out your wad

And chuck it in the bin.

Your bank accoun...

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The hottest March, now ten months in a row.

Women from Switzerland have won their case;

Climate safety is one more human right.

There’s progress, but at far too slow a pace.

The likes of Greta Thunberg talk good sense,

Reminding us that we don’t do enough,

Because we are addicted to our jaunts

And piling up excess, transported stuff.

Although the world revolves an...

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He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He won’t lift a finger or part with change.

He wants his America ‘great again’

And thinks that such places are foreign and strange.

He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He prefers to do favours for his mates:

Like jailbirds whose crimes are far from mundane,

And heads of authoritarian states.

He won’t give a penny to help U...

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I’m batting at eternal number ten.

My mediocre talent falls apart;

Soon I’ll be walking back on nought again.

I’m in a team of skilled, well-coached young men,

Convincing me that cricket is an art.

I’m batting at eternal number ten.

I do not move my feet or sidestep when

A lethal bouncer flies towards my heart.

Soon I’ll be walking back on nought again.

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Two years ago, we had no words,

Because words seemed superfluous.

Branded upon our consciousness,

All we needed was the image:

Each scorched mark would remind us

Of newly discovered horror.

But, in the end, the words returned;

Our memories demanded them.

A less reliable record,

Yet devastating for all that:

Shifting, changing, containing tears

As well as anger. Tha...

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The washing on the line is mine, is mine;

The washing on the line, it dries, it dries.

My best friend down the road, he dies, he dies;

Our enemy of old, he lies, he lies.

The washing on the line, it sighs, it sighs.

The washing on the line is mine, is mine;

The washing on the line, it blows, it blows.

Desire for revenge, it grows, it grows;

The guilty man nearby, he cr...

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I have asked myself what we’re fighting for,

And have acted at times as if I knew,

But now I understand what really counts:

The right to take a different kind of view.

If you wish all opinions the same,

The enemy’s arrangements are for you,

But some of us will battle to preserve

The right to take a different kind of view.

The free flow of exchanges and ideas

Co...

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An avaricious devil is mankind;

He goes and grabs all things that he can find.

Perhaps he’s not aware that it’s unkind;

Faced with the danger, he says ‘never mind’.

Mankind intends to decimate this place,

To slash and burn and eat up every space,

With acquisition as some kind of race

To mop up Earth’s resources with no trace.

The monster has now caught us in his t...

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They have made a mess of the house next door;

Mum, Dad, two kids and a cat are no more.

Can someone explain what they do this for?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

In years gone by, it was never like this;

We greeted, with a handshake or a kiss,

Our nearby friends. How has it gone amiss?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

It looks as thou...

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I’m gonna win big, so big, this time;

I’ll notch up a record score.

There’s no way, trust me, there’s no way

That the other side will get more.

Our democracy is sacred,

To say otherwise is a sin;

So I will accept the verdict,

Provided, of course, that I win!

If I should lose, I will cry foul,

Alleging there was massive fraud;

I don’t need any evidence –

I...

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I knew the Braithwaite boy at school;

I knew him when he started work.

He bagged fruit at the market stall:

Quite slow, but never one to shirk.

His parents lived beside the park;

They were the type to put on airs.

They saw him as an office clerk

Or in the city selling shares.

But he was quiet, often teased,

And ready to accept his place;

The customers seemed...

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My theory is as good as yours,

I am entitled to my facts.

We both have our opinions

But it's me that the truth attracts.

I saw it on the internet;

It’s as valid as your learning.

It says the world is flat and square,

Not round and daily turning.

And don’t expect me to believe

All this talk of global heating;

The weather’s always on the change:

Someone sai...

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Don’t shoot!

Stop the violence,

Stop the killing.

Don’t waste your time with gods,

Or clerics on the greasy pole,

Or warped ideology

Which tells you what to think,

Or the cult of the madmen,

The travelling circus,

The usual suspects,

The old men in suits,

The gap –

Between the theory and the practice.

Be yourself;

Lay down your arms,

Reach out your hand...

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The Grand Old Man of town,

He makes his films and cries:

The scenes contain no love,

No hope, no joy – just lies.

He’s had to do a deal

And play their dirty games,

Although until this day

He does not know their names.

The power of his dreams

Has been reduced to dust;

He’s had to tow the line

To earn himself a crust.

And in a year or two

The wor...

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We laugh at experts and suck up to fools,

Effortless amateurs from public schools,

And love the chancers who sidestep the rules.

That’s how we are right now, that’s how we are.

We laugh at research and usher away

Facts and achievements on public display;

We’d rather go down on our knees and pray.

That’s how we are right now, that’s how we are.

We laugh at the trut...

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As you may have seen on the News and Features page, I have compiled a selection of fifty poems to mark the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some of these poems will be familiar to regular contributors, but a number have not yet featured on the WOL blog.

This is a private print and not available for general sale, but I would be pleased to send a free PDF copy by e-mail to anyb...

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Time, or what passes for time,

Is a culprit, most unkind,

Stealing what we find,

Emptying our mind.

Time should be the music

Which everybody plays,

Adding to our days

In unexpected ways.

But time is made of windows,

Shattered one by one in hate,

A commentary upon this state,

Where rescue parties come too late.

Time is the gun, time is the shell,

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‘Time passes,’ said the man at our table.

‘People want something new.’ I guess he’s right.

It's the prevailing theory round here.

‘The same old faces,’ opined another;

‘You know, Zelensky. Always wants money.’

And ‘here’ is anywhere, maybe everywhere.

Time passes. All of us know that feeling:

You turn a new page in a calendar

Or put away Christmas decorations.

At cricket...

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The hottest January ever;

We’ve passed the one point five degrees.

Climate change is on the march,

Frying the air and boiling the seas.

Do not say we didn’t warn you;

We have been banging on for years.

But the actions of our leaders

Are running decades in arrears.

And don’t pretend it’s all fake news

Or the facts are inconclusive;

Evidence for such opinions

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A morning to freeze the spirits.

As they shiver in hollowed times,
Workers stamp and spit used breath.

At the corner I see two men:

Their eyes wet from today’s bad news.

‘You can always tell,’ says my guide;

'They both had sons where it happened.'

I try to do an interview:

Get short shrift. Understandably.

As we leave, one of them calls out:

‘Poetry is dead. Art is dead...

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We queued at the supermarket;

I saw that everyone was dead.

And yet they were still standing.

Out of defiance? Contempt?

Perhaps just out of habit.

We queued at the bakery,

And in the rows of cakes

We saw the faces of the fallen:

Unmoved, at last at peace.

We queued at the bus stop.

A passer-by called out to us

And we called back,

But no one was alive

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Because I clean the lavatories,

I’m considered quite low grade;

In the last place on the list,

Overworked and underpaid.

Though down the pecking order,

At the thin end of the scale,

You rely upon my labours

With my brushes and my pail.

Do toffs and chief executives

Have to sanitise this mess?

I should get higher wages

Than the barons of the press.

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The war’s cold exclusion has stripped out love.

Two years on, I stroll among the Bruegels;

The pictures dazzle in their joyless way,

Reflecting life’s treadmill of chores, horrors,

Its accommodations and its intrigues,

Its little stratagems for making do,

Not forgetting massacres and revenge.

I’ve read about the gas used at the front

To flush out choking soldiers marked for...

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We went to a ball, but they said we could not dance.

We joined a choir, but they said we could not sing.

We ordered a beer, but they said we could not drink.

We shared an embrace, but they said we could not love.

We went to the bathroom, but they said we could not wash.

We sat in a restaurant, but they said we could not eat.

We took out our pens, but they said we could not write.

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Middle Americans, in their homely way,

Are often overheard to say:

'I was just goofing around.'

They goof and they goof and they goof,

And sometimes they goof a little more.

And then we get Donald Trump.

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You can spot the signs:

They talk of ‘hard-earned cash’,

And ‘putting our people first.’

We know what’s coming next:

‘Yes, the invasion was wrong,

But do we really….?’

Or, ‘why can’t they get together

And sort the whole thing out?’

Fatuous bewilderment

Is hardly an excuse.

It is so damned easy to say:

‘We expected some light

At the end of the tunnel’

When you...

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It was in Chemistry at the end of last week…

I was chatting away at the back of the class

When the teacher came and smacked me round the head.

Shocked, I protested and I said:

‘But I was telling them what you told me:

That the President is a very good man.’

‘That was yesterday,’ he replied. ‘Today he’s a bastard.

He’s just killed my brother and jailed my nephew.’

‘Oh, I’m s...

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He sipped in cafés in the afternoons;

He’d been below the average at school.

Tradition made him thrash away at life,

Despite this, he was no more than a fool.

Then suddenly he had his first big break;

A full-blown, bloody war had to be fought.

His doomed adventures did not matter now;

All trails of damage added up to nought.

A strange equality in times of war

M...

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A school tragedy (A poem within a poem)

The first day of the autumn term

We knew that something was amiss.

We saw the solemn-looking staff;

We felt the pain of grief subsist.

It seemed that in the holidays

A boy called Whipps had disappeared.

Since almost thirty days had passed,

The worst of outcomes was now feared.

He was a shy and quiet boy,

To w...

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A viper slides its way beneath the grass;

The animals of prey are on the prowl.

The innocent and helpless stand no chance

Against the savage tastes of hawk and owl.

Upstairs, forbidden lovers take the plunge;

Their beads of sticky sweat adorn the bed.

She’s fast asleep while he boosts up his pack;

Outside waits a procession of the dead.

The hunters beat the heavin...

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