Higher than the handsomest
The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,
All round it close-ribbed streets rise and
Like a great sigh out of the last century.
The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing
At the entrance are not taxis; and in the
As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.
There are paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup,
Like an airport lounge, but those who tamely
On rows of steel chairs turning the ripped
Haven't come far.
More like a local bus.
These outdoor clothes and half-filled
And faces restless and resigned,
Every few minutes comes a kind of
To fetch someone away: the rest
Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance
Seats for dropped gloves or cards.
Humans,
On ground curiously neutral, homes and
Suddenly in abeyance; some are young,
Some old, but most at that vague age that
The end of choice, the last of hope; and
Here to confess that something has gone wrong.
It must be error of a serious sort,
For see how many floors it needs, how
It's grown by now, and how much money
In trying to correct it.
See the time,
Half-past eleven on a working day,
And these picked out of it; see, as they
To their appointed levels, how their
Go to each other, guessing; on the
Someone's wheeled past, in washed-to-rags ward clothes:
They see him, too.
They're quiet.
To
This new thing held in common makes them quiet,
For past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those,
And more rooms yet, each one further
And harder to return from; and who
Which he will see, and when?
For the moment, wait,
Look down at the yard.
Outside seems old enough:
Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by
Out to the car park, free.
Then, past the gate,
Traffic; a locked church; short terraced
Where kids chalk games, and girls with hair-dos
Their separates from the cleaners - O world,
Your loves, your chances, are beyond the
Of any hand from here!
And so, unrealA touching dream to which we all are
But wake from separately.
In it,
And self-protecting ignorance
To carry life, collapsing only
Called to these corridors (for now once
The nurse beckons -).
Each gets up and
At last.
Some will be out by lunch, or four;
Others, not knowing it, have come to
The unseen congregations whose white
Lie set apart above - women, men;
Old, young; crude facets of the only
This place accepts.
All know they are going to die.
Not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end,
And somewhere like this.
That is what it means,
This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to
The thought of dying, for unless its
Outbuild cathedrals nothing
The coming dark, though crowds each evening
With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.
