A Rooftop in Oaklands Road

I opened my eyes and stared at my

Shakespearean ruler

Spelling out Hamlet and

Bearing the look of the Thames river bank

Where it once belonged

I stare too at that dried red rose

Which reminds me still of a song

Once sung by a broken canary

Which sang and died

On my window sill

I look still at the banana 

A fruit so yellow and complex—

It reminds me of life itself

Treading on—peel on peel

Slips on slips, falls on falls.

Now, through my window,

On the roof below they lie—

Like fragments of something I almost understood

The broken scale, the red rose, and a banana peel