Crime Scene Investigators

The house opposite to where I live
has been a crime scene for as long
as I can remember. Like a song
that won't leave my head
it goes on and on and on.
When the investigation squad's
plastic yellow ribbon
(tied around the old gum tree
at one end and stretched
tightly to the neighbour's fence)
begins to fray in the sun and wind,
they replace it with the latest
chequered fashion in police tape.
And there is a constant string
of literary detectives
visiting the cordoned-off
carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,
uncut lawn, cement and brick veneer,
a fresh detective every day -
I've seen Woody Allen go in there
verbalising every suspicion,
and Camus, too,
who quietly sucked on a cigarette
and didn't reveal much.
Last week Maupassant turned up
looking for a lead,
and the day before that
it was Emily Dickinson
doing her thing in surgical gloves:
such wonderful minds
to have come up with nothing.
And you would think that the clues
would age and wither,
that the fingerprints would dry up,
that the forensic information
would pass its used by date.
But the scene of the crime remains,
seemingly as precious
as a miniature ship
shelved inside a bottle,
or a deep love
stopped up in a human skull.
By now, that unvexed culprit
could be a million miles away,
or just across the street
looking on.