Life etc.

After Her Funeral

After the funeral my father looked backOver some fifty yearsIn search of a reason for remorse.Humming and whistling, at last he hitOn when they toured the Highlands together,With Billy Miles, in their first car,A two-seater Swift with dickey in the rearThat opened like a lid.

My father was driving, her turn in the dickey,Billy inside, snug, smug, and chatty,When a storm broke over Glencoe.She was drenched forthwith,While Billy chatted under cover, dryAnd warm and quite oblivious."How could I do that to her?"My father asked me: "Why let that BillyBlab on and stay dry, dry and under cover,While she was soaked to the skin?"

I'd never heard that story before, I lied.There was nothing to forgive.She'd always said he was lovable,Beloved, an excellent man.And I shivered, feeling the desolationForming around me, the chill, the wet,

And thought of their flaming rows,Hurled glasses and jugs, shouts in the night,Grapes chucked on the fire like money,Even departures—happenings that now meant nothing.

Bread

You take yourself for granted, but if you askwhat I miss most, I'll have to say your bread:how every loaf roof falls to the knife, its oatnuggets loading the cut rift; how crustand rough crumb answer to butter at breakfastwith coffee; how teeth crunch on it as I'm fed,how tongue savors and spit spurts. Your breadputs me in touch with every common lust.For trees up here lean blazing on the field,mountains rise naked from a colored furof leaves like hard embarrassed men, the fallbursts overhead like rockets. Despite allI'm dull with hunger, every sense is sealed,wanting your bread, the body's integer.

The Pet

I say, "Go away!" to the dog when she pesters meand brings the ball to me once too oftenwhen I want to read, and she leaves obediently

but is back in two minuteshaving thought of another of our games.I must have some value, then,though I can't say what that is,stranded as I am at the end of lifelike a castaway watching ships far out at sea.

Suddenly though she becomes irresistible,her brilliant black eyes in her brindled peltregistering a ridiculous amount of regard,and now it's as though I'm sailing a small boatamong liners and ferries and container ships,a proper blip upon the radar screen,and I throw the ball for her one more time.

Dancing at Home in the Thirties

They rolled back the rugs to reveal the plain boardswhich they sprinkled with crystals to make a smooth floor,

trod them in and then seized each other and swooped,glided, out of character, the pair of them sharing a mood,

breathily humming or murmuring the words of a song,dancing by themselves without music, so I had to make fun

of them both to myself and ran off embarrassed and hid.I don't know what else happened or what they did,

excepting the rugs were replaced when I came in again,and they were laughing and humming right up to the evening.

So later that night, after the guests came and they'd dined,rugs were rolled back again, and music unwound

from seventy-eights on our box of a gramophone,and all danced, transformed, the women in their slinky long

dresses, the men in their black tailored suits,white shirts, bow ties, rosetted shoes, elastic-sided boots

just visible from the top of the stair as they whirled:portly Bill Brown and Nell, slim Alan, Rita, Dan, Andrea.

In the morning—Sunday, of course—my parents slept late.The smell of cigars downstairs, ash in the grate,

the furniture still pushed against the walls,the maids bustling. I started to dance by myself

till Betty whirled me about. No, let me alone,I protested. I wanted to dance by myself, quite alone.