好友逼我读诗：What the Weather is Like

What the Weather is Like
by Susan Watson

It's gone on far beyond that muffled storybook dream
framed by a window. I had forgotten
how pawprints and footprints start out precise as a date stamp
and then flake down break down to old fashioned peppermint cream
and then the weight of crowds and the soupy dirt and now
the pavement has been compressed into an endless river
of grey and choppy glass. The sunshine echoes and
all the light bounces at a hard angle. It's treacherous
and unstable, this struggling to get from one point to another.

In the second hand bookshop I'm the only customer.
He's listening to jazz. I'm offered coffee. I say
no thank you but notice that the cups are patterned orientally
with deep gold rims. Christmas is over now. Still
there's the highlighting of something extra
on trees and brickwork, of many ancient and potential items
down from storage. This is a place in which I might have lived
if I had only known that glittering could be sounded in such a way,
so that each expensive separate syllable splinters and rings.