28th may 2004
We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come and are standing round
In deadly crescent.
The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black removers van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the women in dark glasses and the humpbacked surgeons
And the scissor man.
- W.H. Auden