September has always felt like a time of beginnings and ends, of arrivals and departures. During all those long childhood, and later young adulthood, years it was the start of the new year – new lessons/courses, new teachers/lecturers and new places to have to go to and get used to. And, naturally, it’s a new season – the start of autumn. At the same time, it's a time of endings. The end of the long summer break, of holidays and freedom; the end of what one’s got used to, of whole patterns of living. Now is the time to pack stuff away, to decide how to leave things and – if away – to go home. The end of summer, no less. My poem focuses on departure – an imagined departure, in a very specific context. The Officers’ Mess at Theresienstadt The curtains still hang there half drawn since they left in a hurry that morning. Everything else they took with them – the gramophone, records, and group photographs, carved crests of the regiments painted on s