One
And seated on the step, eyes closed, he bends

Towards the dead grass that obscures his feet,

And sullenly extends

His right-hand fingertips, while with complete

Indifference to his presence there,

She stands and leans before the wall

And window, glowering with an inward stare,

Arms folded to repress

A disappointment too deep for deceit.

Blind-eyed in bitterness,

The pair of them see nothing here at all.
The house, clapboard in rural gothic, seems,

Like them, to be oblivious of the site,

Absorbed in years-long dreams

It can’t awaken from. The walls are white,

And white the blinds, and the blind glass

That seals the door is white. All round

The house, a shallow sea of faded grass

Laps at the walls in still,

Wind-counterfeited waves, sapped by the light

It trapped in chlorophyll.

In those dry shoals what jetsam may be drowned?
The collie, wading through it, pauses, tensed,

Head turned towards some motion, sound or scent,

Something to warn against.

Behind the house, vaguely malevolent

In its dark, dense encroachment, presses

A forest all of conifers,

Like one of those ensorcelled wildernesses

In M R James—those trees

Escaping from the maze where they were pent,

With baleful potencies.

But for the moment nothing. Nothing stirs.
Two
Massing in ranks of shadow from behind

The house, presses a wood of spruce or fir.

What should it bring to mind?

The one where, by his own dark character,

Midway along his lifelong course,

Dante was fatefully decoyed?

Or mind itself—distress that cannot force

Its way to consciousness,

But thickens and makes ever gloomier

The rooms it can’t possess?

A forest for analysis by Freud.
She leans against the window and the wall,

Arms folded tightly underneath her breast,

Wrapped grimly in recall

Of grievances that will not be confessed

This evening, in this company.

He’s seated on the step, extending

A hand to brush the long grass vacantly,

Without a word to say.

Nothing they own holds any interest

For either. Anyway,

Neither one is looking, or comprehending.
The house, surrounded by the long, dead grass

And equally oblivious, still waits

For time to—what? To pass?

The dog, adrift in dry haulms, hesitates,

Head turned, ears cocked. Perhaps he’s heard

A twig snap, or has caught a scent,

Or seen the flicker of a startled bird.

Perhaps someone he knows

Is coming and now opening the gates.

Over the grasses blows

A breeze as doubtful as this incident.
Three
Dead grass in one uninterrupted sweep

Chokes all the waste that was, or might have been,

A garden, parched and deep

Enough to drown the collie’s legs. He’s seen

Some movement to his right, or heard

A rustling, caught a waft of scent,

And stands alerted. Something has occurred.

At least, he thinks it has.

In that caesura, poised to intervene,

He waits, unmoving as

The scene around him, and as imminent.
Behind the house, hard up against that wall,

The dreary ranks of conifers impose

Their darkness to enthral

The sorry property. One thinks of those

Imagined forests and what could

Be conjured there and come to pass,

And soon enough of history’s haunted wood.

One of the firs is much

More forward than the rest, and one branch grows

Across, almost to touch

A window and its unreflecting glass.
He’s sitting. She is standing. Man and wife,

Presumably, and looking as though they

Were sentenced here to life.

Of such concerns the house does not betray

A clue, sunk deeply in abeyance,

Years long, as much by day as night,

And seems to be absorbed in its own séance.

Walls, door and blinds confess

The only secret they will give away:

Nothing. Like happiness,

Though very far from that, the house writes white.
Four
Clapboard rural gothic: the old house seems

Forgetful of itself and of its site,

Sunken in timber dreams,

Which creak to measure time that never quite

Awakens into life, or passes—

While lapping at its walls there came

This stationary tide of drying grasses.

Too late, though, to react.

White walls, white blinds, glass in the front door white,

White as a cataract.

No one looks out from here beyond the frame.
And the long grass, the colour of a biscuit,

Died in despair of ever being mown.

It comes up to the brisket

Of a collie waiting for some yet unknown,

Unseen occurrence or approach.

Head turned, ears cocked, he pauses, tensed,

For this drawn moment to resolve and broach

What must be imminent.

A sound, a stirring that the dog alone

Makes out, a waft of scent?

Something to welcome—or to warn against?
Behind the house, dense, ominous and dim,

Presses the forest, all dark conifers,

Like something out of Grimm.

But, ah, the couple, steadfast ministers

Of grievances they can’t express,

Are set in place outside the door

And, locked behind a blind-eyed bitterness,

See nothing here at all.

He sits. She stands. No more. Nothing occurs.

They wait for night to fall.

If there is anything they’re waiting for.


Notes:

In response to Cape Cod Evening by Edward Hopper.