x

It is always the same window, one out of which they have climbed

Into the garden; leaving the house to its dreams at the fringes of sleep:

Out of it by the back stairs or in by my half of the bedroom;

Always the same low window in a corner of that parlour into which

And out of which they have climbed in bare feet in the moonlight.

Water their dreams in the back of the parlour with its low window

Opening onto that wing of the garden which has the forest branches hanging over it.

x

That aria in the parlour which is climbing up and up to the bedroom

By the window then opening so freshly onto that sleep into which they glide

Is climbing in through a low window and then up the back stairs

To the door of the guest bedroom or to that of the Moorish bedroom

Next to it. The window-sill is merely a “has been” following the secluded smells

With the same edge of that water which Boy and then Igor, Burhardt, Rudi and Eric

All pronounce bare to the moonlight. The back door of the garden

x

The guest so obscured is through the next window up the stairs.

Jenny and Arja – all pronounce it “Aria” – wash their feet in the house, or wash my feet

Where the smells of the wing in the moonlight are hung

In the parlour opening onto that secluded corner half obscured

By a rhododendron. Always the same back window climbed. Always,

Always the same low pair of branches out of which they wing,

To glide up the stairs and into the forest. Burhardt is bare and, boy,

x

They are in through that window, getting their legs over Arja and Jeanne;

Rudi is hanging over the stairs next to the Moorish ghost which hides in the wall.

The lawn slopes up to the edge of the low brickwork where the window

Is always the same; the opening, out of which they have climbed onto the fringes

Of kilims where the lawn slopes up to it, a window into and

Out of which they have climbed, Giacomo and Jeanne, getting

Their legs over the sill, or following a ghost which is merely a pair

x

Of split pantaloons up the back stairs to the guest bedroom which has been

Freshly decorated or to the Moorish one next door where the walls are hung

With kilims, one of which hides the door to the bedroom. Which? The one

Next door. Then it is Igor and Eric, at wing in the moonlight, is bare brickwork

Which has feet in it, low in the wall where the walls of the house are hung

With decorated Moorish pantaloons, and into the garden next door

To the window Jenny and Giacomo climbed through – or they split a guest in.

x

This is a poem I call a “Statheron”. In it all the words must be used an equal number of times – that is, a word cannot be used once, or an odd number of times. Here, “rhododendron” is used once, but also appears as the title. The poem can be found in my collection “ABSTRACTIONS” – which is published on this Heyzine link and can be read for free