In
Berkshire somewhere 1970
I
hid in a laurel bush outside a house,
Planted
in gravel I think.
I
stopped running and just pushed open
Its
oilskin flaps and settled down
In
some kind of waiting room, whose scarred boughs
Had
clearly been leaning and kneeling there
For
a long time. They were bright black.
I
remember this Museum of Twilight
Was
low-ceilinged and hear-through
As
through a bedroom window
One
hears the zone of someone’s afternoon
Being
shouted and shouted in, but by now
I
was too evergreen to answer, watching
The
woodlice at work in hard hats
Taking
their trolleys up and down.
Through
longer and longer interims
A
dead leaf fell, rigidly yellow and slow.
So
by degrees I became invisible
In
that spotted sick-room light
And
nobody found me there.
The
hour has not yet ended in which
Under
a cloth of Laurel
I
sat quite still.
Alice
Oswald
