HIDDEN

Very often there are men leaving their houses late
at night. Some of them do this because they have
entered another drenching dream that dances and feels
like success, wonders, dazzling arrivals and new moons.
Some of them do this heading for sheds and bus shelters
and even tree houses and winter caravans where God will
not find them and their degradations and the memory of
skinflicks and lost gardens and where they have hidden
broken things and split whispers and other arrangements.
Others do this because they are poets and they need new
sequences and scatterings and star songs and wish to sit
in the company of boughs and birds embracing dawn.
A few also do this because they have died, there is no time
left and if there is a god he must be found and they need to
search beneath ordinary meanings and inspect deserted parks
and closed railway stations and make sure their toys are hidden.
Very often there are men leaving their houses late at night and
when they return only the clocks say anything, ask questions.

David Grubb