And what they would pass by on either side -
On each one's side - dissolved into the air,
The general air, of the phase or stage of things
They and their local walk were moving through
Until it seemed that they could not be said
To share the walk they took so much as that
The walk itself, a tall, responsible
Adult, went between them, holding both their hands
Until they happened on the unexpected
Obstacle - and whether it had leapt up
As an expanded stumbling-block too massy
And oddly-formed merely to trip over,
Or cried out silently and suddenly
In an abyss, all hands parted, they passed
He to the left
Around it, saying
Bread
And Butter!
out
Of phase and finally out
Of contact with
Some mass of palpable,
Immediate
Souvenir then, and yet
Avoiding that
Abyss of memory
The phrase's taste
Upon his uttering tongue
Could open up.
By then his hands no more
Could even feel
Anticipations of
A touch regained:
These two could not be read
As from above,
Say, as "the two of them":
Looking across
The separation now
Had made no sense
For some time now in fact
Or fiction too.
She rightward then with
Bread
And Butter!
said
Of touch and loss of touch;
Of childhood that
Had lingered with her long,
The phrase she spoke
Itself spoke; but by then
The time for hands
Laughingly to rejoin
Was gone. The gap
Between them now was all
The making of
Their walk itself; the way
She took, the way
She had been taking now
was not just hers,
Let alone part of theirs,
But merely all
The way there was. The cut
Lines on the sidewalk
Between the concrete squares
And which the games
Of childhood cut so deep
Were not the same
There on the other side.
