Upon the beach at violet-blue noon,

in a vacational Elysium

a striped bather took

a picture of his happy family.

And very still stood his small naked boy,

and his wife smiled,

in ardent light, in sandy bliss

plunged as in silver.

And by the striped man

directed at the sunny sand

blinked with a click of its black eyelid

the camera’s ocellus.

That bit of film imprinted

all it could catch,

the stirless child,

his radiant mother,

and a toy pail and two beach spades,

and some way off a bank of sand,

and I, the accidental spy,

I in the background have been also taken.

Next winter, in an unknown house,

grandmother will be shown an album,

and in that album there will be a snapshot,

and in that snapshot I shall be.

My likeness among strangers,

one of my August days,

my shade they never noticed,

my shade they stole in vain.