A woman with no face walked into the light; A boy, in a brown-tree norfolk suit, Holding on Without hands To her seeming skirt. She stopped, And he stopped, And I, in terror, stopped, staring. Then I saw a group of shadowy figures behind her. It was a wild wet morning But the little world was spinning on. Liplessly, somehow, she addressed it: The book must be opened And the park too. I might have tittered But my teeth chattered And I saw that the words, as they fell, Lay, wriggling, on the ground. There was a stir of wet wind And the shadowy figures began to stir When one I had thought dead Filmed slowly out of his great effigy on a tomb near by And they all shuddered He bent as if to speak to the woman But the nursery governor flew up out of the well of Saint Patrick, Confiscated by his mistress, And, his head bent, Staring out over his spectacles, And scratching the gravel furiously, Hissed - The words went pingg! like bullets, Upwards, past his spectacles Say nothing, I say, say nothing, say nothing! And he who had seemed to be coming to life Gasped, Began hysterically, to laugh and cry, And, with a gesture of impotent and half-petulant despair, Filmed back into his effigy again. High above the Bank of Ireland Unearthly music sounded, Passing westwards. Then, from the drains, Small sewage rats slid out. They numbered hundreds of hundreds, tens, thousands. Each bowed obsequiously to the shadowy figures Then turned and joined in a stomach dance with his brothers and sisters. Being a multitude, they danced irregularly. There was rat laughter, Deeper here and there, And occasionally she-rats grew hysterical. The shadowy figures looked on, agonized. The woman with no face gave a cry and collapsed. The rats danced on her And on the wriggling words Smirking. The nursery governor flew back into the well With the little figure without hands in the brown-tree clothes.