SHILLINGTON
The vacant lots are occupied, the woods
Diminish, Slate Hill sinks beneath its crown
Of solvent homes, and marketable goods
On all sides crowd the good remembered town.
Returning, we find our snapshots inexact.
Perhaps a condition of being alive
Is that the clothes which, setting out, we packed
With love no longer fit when we arrive.
Yet sight that limited our truth were strange
To older eyes; the town that we have lost
Is being found by hands that still arrange
Horse-chestnut heaps and fingerpaint on frost.
Time shades these alleys; every pavement crack
Is mapped somewhere. A solemn concrete ball,
On the gatepost of a sold house, brings back
A waist leaning against a bucking wall.
The gutter-fires smoke, their burning done
Except for, fanned within, an orange feather;
We have one home, the first, and leave that one.
The having and leaving go on together.
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