THE VANDAL

Someone has been tearing up the autumn,

Its ripped leaves ripple across the road

Flip liked hinged cards in the moist grass.

The rain-varnished houses vanish in smoke,

Drift on the air like blown-out breath in gusts:

So we forget frog-ponds and nut-gatherers,

Remember instead that weather’s for us

Who know too well its intentions, wind-keen,

Intense as the first frost hardening

Stubble grass to a tacky ice-blanket

Listen! In bed we hear the swollen trees totter,

Dropsical-limbed, murmuring outside the window

Like Catherine’s insistent ghost-voice

"Let me in, let me in!"