For Barbara
I step off the pavement
like a precipice
Engage the darting sunshafts
in a duel
In the walls shadow I web
my prints to pattern
The moist stone virgins.
The lawns are white-coated
their throats red
With berries and bird-song;
in petrified gardens
Hyacinth tongues lip the wall.
Leaf mould muffles my heel-taps
the enormous trees totter
In the hyaline air; I hear the
Sunday strollers in their
Mist-making walks, pressing through them
like some voiceless ghost.
