still opens the window and hollers). I saw him reach back –
water maybe, or food. I saw the crane work way past

the dinner hour and it grew so hot on the doorstep where
I sat that I had to get my hat. Just a few seconds and he

was up and out of that cab. I caught him as he jumped
lightly on to the platform then watched as he came down,

hand over hand down the metal ladder. I went inside.

*

Reading over that part of the poem, sitting in the ancient
green deckchair outside the writing room in the shade

of the earlyish morning, I look up and down he comes
again, as if summoned (hey, how about that, I would say

if I were American). About ten rungs down, he stops
and I imagine takes in the view of the soft, still

Mediterranean – one of the boys said this morning It looks
like you could get a white crayon and draw all over it –

then he reached for the red T-shirt slung over his shoulders
and it fell, down through the circle of the ladder like…

like what? Like a red T-shirt falling down the inside
of a crane. Someone on the ground is whistling.

5

  

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