in rooms you sadden, or stretch, in the rooms of our solitude
and touched, maybe, with a butterfly-coloured crisis
fountaining from the crown. a green tea assuages
the blueness of veins. there is calm to intellectually cross
bridges—engineered of finesse—to where who you are
finds itself in new companies of caring thaumaturges
tapping compositions on keys for you to learn
how keys are keys in and out of customary cells
in rooms you have no say, negatively capable,
even as you spy on a green-tabarded builder
crossing the scaffold along the opposite semi-detached house
confidently, in a white helmet. he can see you
also. his task is not literary or alchemical
but in dreams he builds an upside-down pyramid
balancing on its tip, spinning like a top
as you’ve laid words menially as bricks.
your consciousnesses have intermingled. he works in the sun
cutting a black bin-liner into squares for his colleague
squatting behind the chimney, drilling, fixing tiles
they move about the roof’s slant with a panther’s agility
in the few hours of daylight left to them, unprecious.
they won’t – they can’t – be there by night. even if you look
the men in their decades will disappear.
work if you can
Niall McDevitt
Graphic by Elena Caldera