(in memoriam Edith Sitwell, 1887-1964
Osbert Sitwell, 1892-1969
Sacheverell Sitwell, 1897-1988)
I
Note the gradual adhesion of mold and soot and ivy,
the gradual disintegration as stone crumbles down
to tumuli of rubble, leaving the pocky gums pink and gray,
the red brick memory less than stone deep.
The buildings they most often look for,
in these sporadic haunted tours, are those they least expect to find,
and thus, the haphazard findings leave them double-startled
by what is missed and what remembered.
Comrade Mnemosyne seems to step back,
to stand a little to one side, as if alarmed with the possibility
of being seen in their company. There is also this nuanced and annoying
reluctance to be moved, to be cottoned and comforted by inexpert words,
ever on tongue and appropriate to many occasions,
if not, somehow, to these.
II
Here they have relied upon the wily,
base in movement but rising as their needs command.
Lifted above, but not risen so much as to be left naked or made vulnerable.
Rather like dwarves among small children.
For the second time since film’s end the Angel of the Baroque
recites her favorite laughing lines. She is serenely unaware,
and has been (has been) of the many unseen things spilling
round them in rays and rills, in sparks and sudden showers, as though her transit through the heart of stained glass had been queered by a
spider’s egg flaw.
Affected by what she has seen she clings and they cling with her,
lurking down behind her acquiescent words, in waiting
for the laughing line by which they will appear to choose.
III
Their celebrity is in its lean and shadow years
and they have carved an airy niche beside the thin screen, the hooded elm. There they can survey and scan and fantasize repulsion,
conscious of their helplessness to intervene between reputation and the wild vastness that surrounds and affronts and will never quite forgive.