Inland on a Sunday

Through my window coldly falls
Sunday afternoon's dreary pall.
Who said that it had to be
As grey as stone, bark of tree

As gaunt as flesh
Without life?
The curtain's mesh
Means all that I

Can see, the street, the cars
The wan people, wrapped in lonely clothes
Blown by winds they don't request
Sourced in seas they have not missed.

And here I
Peer from the gods.
My mind's eye
Records the tides

Of this far ocean, swelling now
Without a why, nor where nor how.
White horses leap, and so subside.
The horses race, and now I ride.

Cambridge, November 1992