I have escaped from the two-acre rolled garden
where twenty-five fair Anglo-Irish are
consuming champagne. The gnats, I said,
are quite sending me mad. I hope
you will not think it rude
if I go indoors. In fact, 
they were eating me fast.
And those terrible smiles
were eating me too.
They smile but cannot laugh.

I am so sleepy and I do not wish
to share the cliffs with anyone
                            *
Today I walked up the hill
where they are harvesting the corn
and right up among the sheep, silly as ever,
to the very top. Underneath
a creaking beech tree I
blew a lot of thistledown
and admired the different golds
of the cornfield,
and came down again.
                
There is, for once, so little to say.
I cannot go anywhere, start anything now.
Even the bed seems far away
and I am on it.
                            *
In the window which looks out onto the limes
there is an unbalanced construction
of colored plastic squares,
it quite takes one’s mind off
those enormous trees. Of course
they are marvelous trees,
among the finest in the land,
but trees around a house
are really a mistake:
don’t they take the oxygen or something?
They get you somehow.
The trees, and probably the flowers, get you
long before the water.

Pigeons are flopping about
and the Irish are out on their bicycles.
It is going by so quickly
and the sun is falling behind
that unnecessary bush to the right.
                           *
I am sitting here about to get into this bed
and nearly fall out because every night
I feel you are in it too, and in front of me
is the shepherd boy under his glass tree
with his faithful glass dog
and his wooly glass sheep.
I sleep with a Braun electric fan heater
because of being cold I put it in my bed
it just burns bits. So now I am going
to sleep holding you most tight please
tell me where you are.

I do not like not knowing.
                           *
Dreamless sleep.
Wake to the usual gloom and forebodings.
If I am some sort of nut who spends life
elaborately avoiding what I like best,
let it be clear.

And I cannot move.
Deep down I feel instinctively I never will.
I cannot bear to hurt.
I want to say don’t trust me,
don’t love me, I am hell.
                           *
On a foggy morning    
outside Golders Green cemetery
a cousin is being committed to the flames.
They slide the box slowly, contrivedly, out of sight.
Then words of dull intonation from a man
who never knew the lady,
the little gilt automatic doors.

Beastly cheap tear-jerking movie scene.

I’d like an elaborate service with lots of music
and heaps of prayers just read one after another.

I am hugging you. I am trying
to get into the habit of realizing             
you are real.
                           *
The telephone warbles and chirps out with someone
I don’t know who knows someone who
is writing a book around the corner
and wants a cup of tea so I should go
and put the kettle on for heaven knows 
how manyeth time my darling love
are you all right you cannot be alone.

I am feeling very dopey probably not eating
better have an egg or several
I must have drunk twenty cups of tea today
and I feel like a teapot, an old stained one.

What is that incantation I used to mutter as a child.
“…the terrors and dangers of the night…?
It must be a prayer, and kept me awake hours
waiting to glimpse the terrors and dangers
and watch them being warded off, wondering about
the dreadful life grown-ups must lead
to make up a prayer like that.

Hold tight, squeeze.