The backs of four tenements defined a space

stark and strong as a Norman bailey. My windows,

with gates locked against murder,

gazed down on this accidental court.

A lamp fixed low on the wall opposite

burned silent and steady through the night hours.

The paving of the yard, the loom of the brick buildings,

brown and gray and bone in the light, charcoal

and black in the shadow, held the gloomy beauty

of old prisons. I was so young then

that I thought life was long and grief forever

 

I looked for hours across to windows dead as the moon,

down to the blank court and the eye of the wakeful lamp,

and love bitter and hungry as a barracuda

ate at my heart. I lay

with my soul shut up in a stone, my body surrounded by stone,

my heart a prisoner to a heart of stone,

while above me the night moved like water

wearing upon a rock. The light

struck upward through the glass dulled with frost,

through the gate dulled with rust, spread a net

of shadow on the ceiling; I lay burning with love,

frozen in love, while above me

the stars wheeled cold-eyed in their dance.

The night wore away at my heart, the stars

wore their silver tracks into the sky,

and one day in the morning the marshal came

with his papers, and another day

the wreckers came with their engines

 

All this was a long time ago, and I tell you

that of all that mass of wall and window

not a splinter of brick remains,

and of all that weight of grief and love

two ghosts twirl slowly away, far along the corridors,

down in the mines of memory. In this way I learned

the law that governs all hearts, stones, gates, griefs, prisons:

that nothing stands