The Ex-Listeners

‘Is there anybody there?’ said Miliband,
   Knocking on the Ministry door;
And his feet in the silence crushed dead grasses
   Of the atrium eco-floor:
A bird few up out of the heat pump,
   Just above Miliband’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to Miliband;
   No head from the climate mill
Peeped out and looked into his eyes,
   Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a few ex-woke listeners
   That dwelt in the lone Ministry then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
   To that voice from the world of daft men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
   That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
   By lonely Miliband’s call.
And he felt in his heart his strangeness,
   His stillness answering no cry,
While his feet trampled more dead grasses,
   ’Neath a darkening atrium sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
   Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
   That I ate the bacon cob' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
   Though every word he spoke
Fell echoing through the shadows of the Ministry
   From the one man left still woke:
Ay, they heard his foot on the weeds,
   And the sound of a lost soul alone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
   When his clumping feet were gone.

Not Quite Walter de la Mare