(i.m. Antonio Machado.
And for Europe, 1936-45)
leads nowhere, cannot be entered,
down which no one is walking
into the silence, the pure sea
of boats, cryings, scuffed quays.
The grey air is empty, built into
cloud-columns. Street of childhood,
no one is calling.
In its doorways no person is standing
Things happen to us.
War boarded these windows, split walls
spilled in the held spaces.
In the growing dark only a sadness
presses the stairs to the stilled rooms
whose walls peel like maps. Here the guns
and the toys become one another. The war
has moved off. Who left can’t return.
Who lived here forgot the clear lines
the far buildings had, it has happened
we say, the sound bobs on the water.
Who stares at the great shadows, remembers
a voice, forgets whose, who watches
the sunlight fall, there, between high houses
themselves fallen, his feet don’t lead back.
Who had a house now has a stone.