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