(in memoriam Robert Gittings, 1911-1992)
All is done save the leaving.
No final walk-through to note
the patchwork of removal on vanilla walls.
Turn the key with a slow, dramatic, pause,
heartbreak in the inside pocket of his coat,
safe for a midday grieving.
The peacock poster furled tight,
its heft a bouncing lightness
from hand to hand, a baby bludgeon
comically symbolic of love’s dungeon,
now vacated. Cursed, and blessed,
he surrenders, turns back, and catches sight
of a shadow pacing panther-like
behind a curtained window.
The incarnation of damage, nourished
on tears and terrors, the flourished
bulk and clawed deposit no
man pays, come settlement or strike.
He blinks against remembered sun
till the guilty panther slinks away,
a newer daydream rising on demand.
Rules had been broken, solicitation banned
by door-to-door mendicants, prey
at a surplus of five to every beggar’s one.
An intricate face stared back
through a grid, a cage, a fence,
back and forth as though blind.
He passed by, but held in his mind
the ugly fear that nuzzled the dense
roots, the knowledge that his heart was black.
And then the clock struck,
the telephone crying from beneath
a landslide of neglected bills.
No longer his concern, bounding sills
like a silent movie’s silent thief,
grinning with sorrow at such beginner’s luck.