On an April morning
from a first-floor room,
the sash window sticking,
all the unremarkable
taken-for-grantedness
of it: the same almost rain,
almost lifting, the same
cat roused when addressed
(you always bent)
to an undignified falsetto,
and the yellow tulips
first of the year suddenly
sparse, upended like mops.
The magnolia littering.
But mostly the bright
unoccupied air, stiff by
the railings, and silence:
the unformed huddle,
the one-sided conversation,
the cat’s stolidly bored
progress, unspoken to,
across the high-pile grass,
the generous defence
no longer made and
nothing ever being
Freudian, not even
dreams or yellow tulips or –
as far as the film still goes,
the moment ‘frozen into mobility’ –
those brisk overorganizing
wrought-iron railings,
the gold leaf fading.
