1 It is raining on the house of Anne Frank and on the tourists herded together under

1 It is raining on the house

of Anne Frank

and on the tourists

herded together under the shadow

5 of their umbrellas,

on the perfectly silent

tourists who would rather be

somewhere else

but who wait here on stairs

10 so steep they must rise

to some occasion

high in the empty loft,

in the quaint1

toilet,

15 in the skeleton

of a kitchen

or on the map each of its arrows

a barb of wire with all the dates, the expulsions,2

the forbidding3

20 shapes

of continents.

And across Amsterdam it is raining

on the Van Gogh4 Museum

where we will hurry next

25 to see how someone else

could find the pure

center of light

within the dark circle

of his demons.
Which line(s) did you find the most important? Why?