Film Noir Reunion
They came from different directions, the man and the mist, Towards the house. She dragged the window shut As the mist prowled down from one end of the block And the man from the other; against whom she ran To fix the chain on the door. But the mist was in Before the window closed, and the man was in Before the chain had slid along the groove.
He set his hat on a table, the mist Came with it, his gloves went palm on palm On the arm of a chair, his two hands proffered Their fingers to the mist to be introduced; And neither he nor she could dare to speak. She waited as if for her two visitants To be acquainted first. There was a fourth, There was a fourth, which could neither speak nor move By definition, the fourth was silence, The last and deepest reunion for them all.
The silence waited too. The mist sank down And crept into far corners, knowing this brought Their faces into focus as they stood.
And neither of them feared enough to speak.
Alan Brownjohn
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