A large hand opens over me, discreet,
its shadow holding one man tinged with green;
the light holds fast, though altered where we meet,
as moonlight thins the margin of the seen.
I bow. The others keep to hedge and ground,
beyond the garden, measured in their space.
They shape my childhood calmly, without sound,
as if removing something out of place.
It holds to sequence, spare and unadorned:
a pause, a turn, the interval made plain.
We move as sleepwalkers, loosely formed,
our bodies passing through what still remains.
No one explains why they came and did not leave;
on Fountain Street, I stepped from the unseen.