On windowseat or pane; bus gone by, roaring in pain,
Or plaintive sigh. Reflected light, reveals her domicile,
The chimney marks the room; sad brickwork, dull grey, the TV aerial.
Evening will come to this street again, conquering it,
Time will rush the smiles away, swooping down like a bird of prey,
The street full of a rush of wings. Midges still swarm in the sodium light
Near rooms like empty tombs, blank and shut, blinds drawn.
I too will pass on and give up my room to a stranger, and he to a stranger,
Till all the memoried rooms and times are swiped, effaced, from time:
No more traffic rushing in the street, but motion resolved into silence.
Strange now to think of a lack or a void: A room where a voice is not heard.
Sad now to think of a lack or a void: A space not filled.
But I have seen the sign and so the sign remains;
Like a figure broken from a frieze whose outline stays.
I have seen the sign and so the sign remains;
Drawn with encircling hand around the days.
"Because she was recovering from an illness, and had been near death, she looked particularly attractive.
There was something exchanged from my eyes to her's, and back again. I looked at her eyes with naked honesty and she looked back with the same. I felt as though it was the first time I had ever seen her, the first time I had ever seen a fellow human, the first time I had ever seen anyone.
I saw again, as though for the first time, her button nose, the line of eyeliner on her eyes, drawn simply as though with one stroke, thin and simple like a line on a blank sheet of paper....."
