The Park

Because anyone sitting still attracts desire,   

Even this will not be given you, the park   

In June, the silence of a bench at eleven o’clock   

On a Monday morning, or four on a Thursday afternoon.   

Someone will drift toward you, unattached   

And lonely. The spell will be broken, the wrong word said.   

It is cool, but there is no death in the few token leaves   

That must have come down last night, in the rain that freshened,   

The tree-smell that remains. For this season there is no name,   

Not summer, and none of the months of the year—   

A something inside you. Search your mind   

For the green arboriferous Word the boys and girls swing out of   

Like a tree, and the lovers   

On the grass in tantric mode, in an ecstasy   

Of untouching, and the human buddhas, legs infolded, reading.   

Branches, sheer translucent leaves—   

You would die to get under them forever, if it were given you,   

The park, on this, a day like any other day,   

And not the knowledge of everyone ever met   

Who will come upon you, sooner or later,   

If only you stay here. No, not people, or the walkways   

Made in another century, or the murmur of the great city   

Everywhere in the distance, but this breathing-space   

Where the void no longer terrible   

But to be relaxed in, the depressions   

Which anyway here are mild, incoming from the west,   

Slow-acting, chronic, lifelong not acute

Are there to be sat through, waited out   

On a damp bench, as a man sweeps up around you   

And the sun comes out in real time, stealing over the ground

-Harry Clifton