One saw in your eyes
a potential for corruption, but interpreted it
according to his own impoverished conception
of that wide country with its many curious chalets 'lost in woods',
and elegant town houses whose peripheral railings shine
with most conviction

at night: so you walked away, tilting your glass a little.
The interview-more the baldest spoken questionnaire-
had been boring, and no conclusion had been reached. Did you
want the position? Did he, for all his earnest brow-play
(unreadable in the dimness) truly want you to have it?

We will never know. And the audience is restless:
it clatters and gabbles and grins,-climbing further away
from the dull performance, up winding stairs woven
of a mild derision, towards a lyric, rapidly pulsing

imitation of moonlight
in which the now remote objects of the exercise,-
...