Susan McCormick
Manoeuvres
Once, I slept in the dining room
where, in the dark, the huge mahogany
table and chairs were massed,
and ranks rose up from corners,
and men in hefty frames lit up
at intervals bore down from a height,
and a sideboard with scrolls and leaves
and feet that clawed the floor
leapt out from a wall as if
from a forest, and mirrors passed
coded messages from one to the other,
while from the ceiling,
eight–armed shadows, distorting,
hovered and menaced. I cringed
in my trench, not daring to cough
or move or fall asleep, till a shaft
of light from the door parted the dark,
and the Angel of Night came in.
Page(s) 49
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