Matinée

But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the cherubim stand behind us.

                                         – Heinrich von Kleist, ‘On the Marionette Theatre’
                                                                                          (trans. Idris Parry)
Crouched in a punt prow closing
On a limestone landing, by lawns
Ancient in Wordsworth’s time, a don’s
Daughter in jeans tenses to spring:
Thud, scramble up the bank, unlatch
An iron wicket, and she’s loose,
An ingénue flustering goose
And grebe on gravel, grass, mud patch,
Groundlings at her prepubescent
Play.
       We dog her, clap, warn, wave,
Meander under architrave
And side to side, two senescent
Men at twilight,
...