28 OCTOBER 1995, Page 46

Sigmund Freud in Hampstead

Godlike grown to self-forgiveness as the trauma sings where every secret trips itself and spills, The tiniest vacuum forms a blister at the heart of things.

Vienna has chosen death, elected grey-beard Thanatos to rule the hearth of nimble Psyche.

Into her pale flesh he brands the geometric cross And a radio enshrined beyond the lintel of each citizen wipes any film of contradiction from the scrolls. History the tyrant's mistress, Clio the savage courtesan Smiling her mirror smile. Out of the sun come runners dressed from the pages of a Greek mythology Breathless with statistics under the fluent banners.

Alan Wall