The island, with its hooked
Clamps of bridges holding it down,
Its internal spirals
Packed, is tight as a ship
With a name in Greek or Russian on its tail:
As the river, flat and luminous
At its fullest, images the defences:
Ribbed quays and stacked rooves
Plain warehouse walls as high as churches
Insolent flights of steps,
Encamped within, the hurried exiles
Sheltering against the tide
A life in waiting,
Waking reach out for a door and find a banister,
Reach for a light and find their hands in water,
Their rooms all swamped by dreams.
In their angles the weeds
Flourish and fall in a week,
Their English falters and flies from them,
The floods invade them yearly.
A slot of air, the snug
Just wide enough for the door to open
And bang the knees of everyone inside;
You face a window blank with dust
Half-inch spiderwebs
Rounding the squares of glass
And a view on either hand of mirrors
Shining at each other in the gloom.
A glint on her forehead
Obliquely seen leaning on the counter
At the end of a vista of glasses
And one damp towel.
And out of sight in the cellars
Spinning in the dust
The spiders are preparing for autumn.
They weave throughout the city:
Selecting the light for their traps,
They swell with darkness.
Missing from the scene
The many flat surfaces,
Undersides of doors, of doormats
Blank backs of wardrobes
The walls of tunnels in walls
Made by wires of bells, and the shadows of square spaces
Left high on kitchen walls
By the removal of those bells on their boards,
The returning minotaur pacing transparent
In the transparent maze cannot
Smell out his stall; the angles all move towards him,
No alcove to rest his horns.
At dawn he collapses in the garden where
The delicate wise slug is caressing
Ribbed undersides of blue cabbage leaves
While on top of them rain dances.
As the fog descends,
‘What will I do in winter?’, he thinks
Of logs unloading in courtyards
Close by, on every side.
Those long retreating shades,
A river of rooves inclining
In the valley side. Gables and stacks
And spires, with trees tucked between them:
All graveyard shapes
Viewed from his high windowpane.
A coffin-shaped looking-glass replies,
Soft light, polished, smooth as fur,
Blue of mown grass on a lawn,
With neckties crookedly doubled over it.
Opening the door, all walls point at once to the bed
Huge red silk in a quarter of the room
Knots drowning in deep mahogany
And uniform blue volumes shelved at hand.
And a desk calendar, a fountain-pen,
A weighty table-lighter in green marble,
A cigar-box, empty but dusted,
A framed young woman in a white dress
Indicate the future from the cold mantel.
The house sits silent,
The shiny linoleum
Would creak if you stepped on it.
Outside it is still raining
While the birds have begun to sing.