You are the town and we are the clock
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock
The Two
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you

Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word;
To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef, We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose

Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words
When the ships from the islands laden with birds
Come in
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives:
The expansive moments of constricted lives
In the lighted inn

But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance
Nothing is done, nothing is said,
But don't make the mistake of believing us dead:
I shouldn't dance

We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours
The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers

When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come up and are standing 'round
In deadly crescent

The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black removers' van
And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the woman in dark glasses and humpbacked surgeons
And the scissors man

This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two


-W.H. Auden