Quietly, she spoke of tea, toast, the faint after smell of cigars,
Let us say we met in a room: curtained, peeling, private.
Briefly she consulted the winter afternoon,
Reviewed the deadening, leadening sky.

All was discreetly done.
No presences danced beyond no lifted curtains.
Darkness had silted us away.

Words, like spoons, stirred the air.
We slipped into a net of inquisitions.

And all we left behind -
Seems framed, now, by silence.