Het Straat je by Vermeer, c. 1657-58
  

It will rain soon, those clouds tell us as much, 
no deluge, a passing shower only, 
but enough to darken the bricks 
a shade or two and to puzzle the nearby 
canal. They have been warm to the touch 
all morning, the bricks, their ochre reds 

absorbing the sun. Think how those shutters 
will peel every summer, paint 
lifted from the wood, bl...

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Deeper than even the wood pigeon’s gloom, 
and always arriving just too late, 
in light less than a shuttered room, 
our other lives still wait. 

They wait for all that might have been 
had we but turned the other way. 
They have looked into the years and seen 
the emptiness of their days. 

Between the second glance and the first, 
though now uncertain of their names, 
they gather on...

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After the chemical yellows of noon, 
a high tide of brightness 
that came as close to blinding us 
as any naked flame might have done, 

these acres become less vulgar 
by degrees. Brassica napus, 
rape, or oilseed rape, most Janus- 
like of all crops, and here less nuclear 

under the cover of clouds. How dark 
in there between those rods. Not ten feet 
in and you might be lost, o...

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You would enter silently, no warning bell, 
yet reason enough to betray your custom. 
If that lack of signage has not made 
it plain to you already, this is a hell 
of sorts, a trading post with no real trade 
in mind. That wood is darker than Birnam. 

We can find them still if we care to look, 
where all hope was lost, where endeavour 
petered out with just cause, or lingered, 
as if...

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It began innocently enough, a bonsai tree, 
a Chinese willow, 
a gift – did you know what was coming? – before we….. 
It became my sorrow 
in a way, though scaled down, one I tended with care, 
love even, to keep it alive should you….From there 

only a small step to fashion a doll's house 
where they might live happily, 
two people who looked the very models of us, 
and on a shelf a bon...

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