Shell House, Polperro

Frontispiece for two doors oblique to each other, viewed squarely
Is seamed by the perron that enables, however rarely,
A person to exit and, should they wish, climb and re-enter
The house through a porch on the noble floor, skewing momenta
Of a life in progress and a life's totality reviewed,
So the mind queries among coat hooks, and once more when endued
With a power to separate, why the body diverted;
Viewed from one side is unfolded, and shows me in hair-shirted
Recursion climbing the steps, grey steps not visible square on,
To cover off a possible way to leave that, so far, none
May have taken: I leave through the ground floor door a second time,
And go to the Blue Peter Inn; still I see just one sublime
Passage, despite wavering interpolations, coalesce,
One pass, resolutely reformatory, as I assess
My life. A face, unfamiliar, presents itself to me –
This review of life must be independent of memory –
Face of a girl who is perhaps 11 or 12 years old;
I with true wakefulness, as one who is over the threshold,
See this child, and note that her hair is blonde beneath the sedge hat
She is wearing, but still cannot recognise her or see that
This could pertain to my life even; and her voice as she speaks –
Its quality, its colour and the curious way it peaks –
Is strange to me also: "You abandoned me," says she, softly,
And leaves me brooding over her statement's import whilst I see
Myself continue, an apparitionist, towards the Blue
Peter Inn. This girl and my excursion are contiguous through
One pass, a single conjuncture.