You are the town and we are the clock. <br />We are the guardians of the gate in the rock <br />The Two <br />On your left and on your right <br />In the day and in the night, <br />We are watching you. <br /> <br />Wiser not to ask just what has occurred <br />To them who disobeyed our word; <br />To those <br />We were the whirlpool, we were the reef, <br />We were the formal nightmare, grief <br />And the unlucky rose. <br /> <br />Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words <br />When the ships from the islands laden with birds <br />Come in <br />Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives: <br />The expansive moments of constricted lives <br />In the lighted inn. <br /> <br />But do not imagine we do not know <br />Nor that what you hide with such care won't show <br />At a glance <br />Nothing is done, nothing is said, <br />But don't make the mistake of believing us dead: <br />I shouldn't dance. <br /> <br />We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall. <br />We've been watching you over the garden wall <br />For hours. <br />The sky is darkening like a stain <br />Something is going to fall like rain <br />And it won't be flowers. <br /> <br />When the green field comes off like a lid <br />Revealing what was much better hid: <br />Unpleasant. <br />And look, behind you without a sound <br />The woods have come and are standing round <br />In deadly crescent. <br /> <br />The bolt is sliding in its groove, <br />Outside the window is the black remov- <br />ers van. <br />And now with sudden swift emergence <br />Comes the women in dark glasses and the humpbacked surgeons <br />And the scissor man. <br /> <br />This might happen any day <br />So be careful what you say <br />Or do. <br />Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock, <br />Trim the garden, wind the clock, <br />Remember the Two.<br /><br />WH Auden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-two-2/
