It is a dim April
Though perhaps no dimmer than any
London April my friend says
As we turn our backs
To the crooked Thames to the stark
London skyline
walking up the hill’s
Mild slope to one of the paths
And prospects of Kew
He introduces
The various and gathered families
Of trees then every subtle
Shift of design along the grounds
The carefully laid views and pools
The chapel-sized orangery
Where citrus in their huge trolley tubs
Were wheeled behind the glass walls
And spared each winter
Fresh lime grapefruit and orange
That’s what a queen wants
That’s what the orangery says
Now April’s skies grow a little
More forgiving
Breaking into these tall columns
Of white clouds
the kinds of elaborate
Shapes that children call God’s Swans
Here in the country an hour
South of London
where Gibbon finished
Decline and Fall in Lord Sheffield’s library
In the manor house I can see just there
In the trees
as I walk with my friend along
The road that passes by his cottage
At the edge of the grounds of Sheffield Park
Once again
the sky’s high pillars collect
Into one flat unrelieved blanket
Above these shivering leaves
And bent blades
a curtaining mist
Materializes out of the air
As we stop for a moment
On a stone bridge over the small falls
Between two of the lakes
And from the center of one of the lakes
A single swan glides toward us
Its wake a perfect spreading V
Widening along the water
as each arm
Of the V begins to break against
The lake’s shores
the swan holds its head
And neck in a classical question mark
The crook of an old man’s
Walking stick its eyes fixed on us
As it spreads its wings
In this exact feathery symmetry
Though it does not fly
simply lifting
Its head until the orange beak
Almost touches the apex of the stone
Arch of the bridge
Waiting for whatever crumbs we might
Have thought to bring
For a swan
that now turns from us
Gliding with those same effortless gestures
Away without a glance back over
Its smooth shoulder
the mist
Thickens as the clouds drop lower
And the rain threading the branches and leaves
Grows darker and more dense
Until I can barely see the swan on the water
Moving slowly as smoke through this haze
Covering the surface of the lake
That white smudge sailing
To whatever shelter it can find and as
I look again there’s nothing
only
The rain pocking the empty table
Of the lake
so even the swan knows
Better than I to get out of the rain
The way it curled white as breath and rose
To nothing along the wind
tonight
By the wood stove of the cottage
Drinking and talking with my friend
I’ll tell him about the two women
I saw last week in Chelsea
One of them wrapped in a jumpsuit of wet
Black plastic
her hair coal
Black greased and twirled into spikes
That fell like fingers onto her shoulders
But more alarming
those lines she’d drawn
Out from her mouth with an eyebrow pencil
Along her pale cheeks the perfect
Curved whiskers of a cat
And the other one
her friend dressed
In white canvas painter’s pants white leather
Boots and a cellophane blouse
who’d dyed
Her hair utterly white then teased it
So that it rose
Or fell in the breeze lightly and stiffly
As feathers who’d painted her mouth
The same hard rubbery orange as a swan’s
And even to a person of no great humor
Or imagination they were
these two
In the silent path they cut in the air
Along King’s Road in every way
Beautiful
and for the rest
Of the day I was so shaken I made
Myself stop for a drink in Soho
A strip joint called The Blade
I’d stumbled into and judging from my
Welcome not a place for the delicate
But I stuck it out through enough Scotch
To make me drunk fearless
And screaming through the first show
When at its end the final stripper
Stepped from the small stage right onto the bar top
Everyone clearing away the glasses and bottles
From the polished copper in front of them
As she threw off everything strutting
Down the narrow bar except
A white boa G-string
Shivering against her thighs as she
Kicked her silver high heels to either side
Then lay down in front of me
Her bare back and shoulders pressed flat
To the copper as it steamed and smudged beneath
Her body’s heat
the catcalls and hollers
Rising as she lifted each leg
Pointing her toes to the spotlights scattered
Across the ceiling
her legs held in a pale V
The silver sequins of her high heels
Glittering in the lights but
Then she stood abruptly
And stepped back onto the stage not
Waiting a moment before turning her back
To the hoarse cheers
disappearing
In the sheer misty gauze of the old curtains
And as the lights came up there was
Where she’d been
Just the trails and webs of cigarette smoke
Those long curlicues in a tattoo of light
Those ghosts and feathers of dust
Still drifting down onto the bare tables
The glistening bar
onto the empty veiled stage
Of wood warped gently as waves