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Michael Hamburger

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View From A Back Window

Bay State Road, Boston

A strip of street where nobody walks,
Cars, between dustbins, illegally park
('Police take notice'), fenced for safety
With concrete, wire, against the two-way flow
Of traffic on the throughway. Then,
Unfenced, the grassy bank, with trees, a path
Where nobody walks but joggers run.
Still closer to the wide dividing waters
That hardly seem to flow, their surface ripple
Flattened, slowed down by trucks, a bench more green
Than the short grass it stands on. There
A man — voyeur of beer cans, eavesdropper
On engine rumble, chassis rattle, screech
of tires, gratuitous inhaler
Of gases not his property — could sit
And, willing, strong enough to raise his eyes,
On the far bank observe the two-way flow
Of traffic on the throughway; then
The tall facades, bare tenement, turret of chateau,
Factory chimney, mosque rotunda, where
Behind the blocked view seeing could begin.

poetrymagazines' note: Reproduced with kind permission of the Michael Hamburger Trust.

Page(s) 164

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