A winter visit

A winter visit Dannie Abse Now she's ninety I walk through the local park where, too cold, the usual peacocks do not screech and neighbouring lights come on before it's dark. Dare I affirm to her, so aged and so frail, that from one pale dot of peacock's sperm spring forth all the colours of a peacock's tail? I do. But she like the sibyl says, Ί would die'; then complains, 'This winter I'm half dead, son.' And because it's true I want to cry. Yet must not (although only Nothing keeps) for I inhabit a white coat not a black even here—and am not qualified to weep. So I speak of small approximate things, of how I saw, in the park, four flamingoes standing, one-legged on ice, heads beneath wings. ...