Salthouse


Two have slipped through the sky
On a yellow February.

Nothing but the raddled sea
The mouth drained, the heart empty.

No apparition, no gold, no strange bird.
No stone mysteriously turned.

Nothing but the psalmody of villages:
Newgate, Kelling, Bodham Street.

Two men washed as if for sacrifice,
Laid on an opened sheet.

*

They will go back as usual,
Watching carefully the last boat in.

One boat fewer in the morning.
Nothing that the eye takes in.

Robert Stein