Ode to Suburbia

Six o'clock: the kitchen bulbs which blister Your dark, your housewives starting to nose Out each other's day, the claustrophobia Of your back gardens varicose With shrubs, make an ugly sister Of you suburbia. How long ago did the glass in your windows subtly Silver into mirrors which again And again show the same woman Shriek at a child? Which multiply A dish, a brush, ash, The gape of a fish. In the kitchen, the gape of a child in the cot? You swelled so that when you tried The silver slipper on your foot It pinched your instep and the common Hurt which touched you made You human. No creature of the streets will feel the touch Of a wand turning the wet sinews Of fruit suddenly to a coach, While this rat without leather reins Or a whip or britches continues Sliming your drains. No magic here. Yet you encroach until The shy countryside, fooled By your plainness falls, then rises From your bed changed, schooled Forever by your skill, Your compromises. Midnight and your metamorphosis Is now complete, although the mind Which spinstered you might still miss Your mystery now, might still fail To see your power defined By this detail. By this creature drowsing now in every house— The same lion who tore stripes Once off zebras. Who now sleeps, Small beside the coals. And may, On a red letter day, Catch a mouse.