You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;

You were sculpted on a prow,
Time wore you away as the foam might have done,
It closed your eyes one stormy night,

Doubly silent the afternoon
By virtue of empty summer, and of a flame
Overflowing, is it from this vase

Knock,
Knock forever.

In the lure of the threshold.

It’s dawn. Has this lamp finished, then,
Its task of hope, hand resting
In the mirror fogged up over the fever

Despite one querulous, raised paw,
the ermine is being held. I am not.
Unseemly, it claws

I telescope you out to the farsighted wrong
end of the instrument

Seven cliffs of alabaster
Sisters overlook
England’s finest downs.