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 doing so might redeem the time it took 
to fail at length, places unhindered 
by progress. Here is such and destined never 

to change, one more failed enterprise 
among the many. Even open, you suspect 
footfall will be light through that door 
until it closes with the afternoon’s demise; 
or, a blind pig, continues as before 
its commerce behind a frontage of neglect. 

Who would enter there? That placatory 
off-white fools no one, and imagine 
what plaques of sunless absence lie 
behind each sale. That window has a vacancy, 
offers no reflection to those walking by 
at that hour and without good reason. 

Time will pass in there as it must, the clock 
serving as sundial until the second blind 
is drawn by someone who knows what 7am 
means here, a shop where what you lack 
is never sold, how each day begins the same, 
the wood too close, the sun wide and bland. 

* The painting is by Edward Hopper and dates
from 1948. It's called 'Seven A.M.'. 
Hopper's
wife said the store was a 'blind pig', a front 
for an illicit operation.