All the walls are windows, but opaque
From all the years they’ve been here, all the dust,
So up on the top steel girders I can hardly
Detect the twitching tail of a Norway rat,
The last of my certainties surviving still,
Feeding on a few brave mice perhaps.
The rest is just the universal mess – old pots
or rivets, half-strung violins, sandwich wrappers
crumpled round their half-eaten contents,
love letters, draft notices, all the so-on that ever was.
I leave the rat to his brave mice, lock the door,
Go out to walk under the beautiful, uncertain sun.
