Chiswick 1934: Second German Spy

 

 

 

The Folly

The German Spy

 

 

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Chiswick 1934

 

This area, where an up-and-comer rubs shoulders

With the fraying shawl of gentility

A lineage forged in lint

And where underground commuters spot oddity

Familiarly in circled eyes

And fierce vampiric lights

That pudding-skinned visages blanch

into a sinister loneliness

The chap whom no one knew

Fit in

And no one missed him

When he went

 

His room was in the attics

Or to speak of matters strictly, is

Even now he occupies his bed

It can’t entirely be said

Krug has vacated premises

A host of new arrivals even

Squats upon the lease

 

Puzzled, but largely still

Bearing above other stirrings pity for himself

A man falsified in grim disguise and shunned

(notwithstanding) he is further

Shackled in place by a bony ankle

Reaches for the writing table

Where in his native tongue he had

Inked logorrheic gusts

And when she comes…

Will she have the sense

To burn those first—at once

Or will she stand aghast?

 

 

 

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Chiswick 1934

The Watchman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2018, Stephanie Foster)