Armada

In a hospital a mile or so from that pond

I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,

reach out across forty years to touch once more

that pond’s cool surface,

and it is your cool skin I’m touching;

for as on a pond a child’s paper boat

was blown out of reach

by the smallest gust of wind,

so too have you been blown out of reach

by the smallest whisper of death,

and a childhood memory is sharpened,

and the heart bums as that armada burnt,

long, long ago.

The Betrayal (#ulink_7b4daced-5d7f-533c-ad94-9d075f8d8d1b)

By the time I got to where I had no intention of going

Half a lifetime had passed.

I’d sleepwalked so long. While I dozed

Houses outside which gas-lamps had spluttered

Were pulled down and replaced,

And my background was wiped from the face of the earth.

There was so much I ought to have recorded.

So many lives that have vanished –

Families, neighbours; people whose pockets

Were worn thin by hope. They were

The loose change history spent without caring.

Now they have become the air I breathe,

Not to have marked their passing seems such a betrayal.

Other things caught my attention:

A caterpillar climbing a tree in a playground,

A butterfly resting on a doorknob.

And my grandmother’s hands!

Though I saw those poor, sleeping hands

Opening and closing like talons,

I did not see the grief they were grasping.

The seed of my long alienation from those I loved

Was wrapped in daydreams.

Something I’ve never been able to pinpoint

Led me away from the blood I ought to have recorded.

I search my history for reasons, for omens. But what use now

Zodiacs, or fabulous and complicated charts

Offered up by fly-brained astrologers?

What use now supplications?

In the clouds’ entrails I constantly failed

To read the true nature of my betrayal.

What those who shaped me could not articulate

Still howls for recognition as a century closes,

And their homes are pulled down and replaced,

And their backgrounds are wiped from the face of the earth.

The Eavesdropper (#ulink_306ed63f-7806-5440-81d3-fb46ffcb74a6)

From my vantage point on the top stair