The trees are not the same as the dirt, The trees are mobile and stand still, They grow away from the ground, Like nervous mothers under the armpits, In the darkness.

And the sky, with all its gaps, Shakes up and down, And the dark is like a blind fold. We do not know what lies behind.

The road twists around the hedges, While silences fall between the creatures, Upon the blank world lit by the sun, Graceless as a flight of starlings, Like heels that ripple, And all that is splendid about the trees, Cannot hear their soft cries. Together they hang still, In this immense growing nothingness.

• Stephen Spender