King furrows his brow, turns
from the painted casement.
An ever level lawn, shadow
barred and border orderly, yawns.
It stretches out, year on year
on year, to pastureland.
Poplars like policemen,
guard his settled perimeter.
He is thinking what lines to draw,
how to moor his houseboat mind.
Flat with chloral, he looks back:
haystack and horses, cabbages in rows,
the daily digging of flower beds.
Walls without corners hold him safe
beyond his loss. He broods upon
what brushwork still could show.
Now daylight cleaves the terraces
through skyline fractures, newly-ripped by night.
Silence after bombs.
In the thick of tumbled red-brick,
blown-out windows under
a bare-ribbed roof. Its upturned hull –
skeletal, smouldering –
an acrid nip of burnt rafter.
Scorched wallpaper, plaster dust,
the lost teeth of gapped chimneys.
Hunched in trench-coat, King looks on
at streets turned inside out.
A filling canvas returns his stare.
Cock-eyed angles, missing doorways,
that distant yellow dress:
his world within a frame.
