Exits

We moved through the place like
ghosts, really, wearing oversized coats,
the petrified stares of stuffed mammals
as masks. We crept backstage,
rearranged the things we thought
would be noticed: props on a table,
cosmetics, a wig.
I smelt the pigeons
rustling in the rafters, a puff of feathers.

The Hall fell silent.
Or rather, we listened to the silence
that was already there
in the worlds we’d built in miniature,
the scheduled exits and the walk-on parts
who shift clumsily in velvet
as Lord such-and-such.

The darkness gave way;
all around us was light;
we could see all the bones in our hands
and the way they were fixed,
and the cue, when it came,
was clearer than that;
and I knew what to do
and I did it, not
with the snarl of a fox –
like a bird, released,
that was caught in a roof.