I am sorry, she would say. That’s all right, I would murmur. She stood with her back towards me, my nose nearly touching. The train lurched to the right, giving me the space to breathe in freely, and I waited for the swing back when I would have to lift her from my chest, with…
Her long straight uncombed tangled tresses and miscellaneous modern dresses and double chin and sloppy carriage led to her being called a baggage, while he was an outstanding figure somewhat declined in shape and vigour but proud. The Baggage and the Toff: these two were star turns, nothing put them off. He muttered, “Mutton dressed…
A long time since the last scream cut short — Then an unnatural silence; and then A natural silence slowly broken By the shearwater, by the sporadic Conversation of crickets, the bleak Reminder of a metaphysical wind. Ages of this, till the report Of an outboard motor at the pier Fractures the dream-time, and we…
1 In nineteen sixty, in July a husband made his young wife cry. Mr Cordelia, plain and true, God help the poor bitch marries you, your truth that lacks the warmth of lies, the decency to compromise. Watch him this dull and windy day, the seventh of their holiday. There’s been a row, he runs…
She learned again so soon How the body is subdued To all the laws that rule The acorn’s fall and the erosion of tall cliffs. Like one borne away in a dance and veiled She dreamed of a high house with shining floors Where they squatted over stoves And well-shod women held breath in the…
“Dear wife, I don’t suppose you understand my cheerfulness these days with passion cooling, my love-songs of a bachelor, my boyish fooling, the way I lie so easy on my own side or rise to screw newspaper for the fire? Crooning over breakfast pans is all that I desire. Safely alive in the quiet light…
My eldest sister arrived home that morning In her white muslin evening dress. `Who the hell do you think you are Running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn’t enough bother With the world at war, if not at an end.’ My father was pounding the breakfast-table. `Those Yankees were touch…
Looking back, the language scribbles. What’s hidden, having been said? Almost everything? Thrilling to think There was a secret there somewhere, A bird singing in the heart’s forest. Two people sitting by a river; Sunlight, shadow, some pretty trees; Death dappling in the flowing water; Beautiful to think about, Romance inscrutable as music. Out of…
Ten years into memory, a house in the bright fluid time—dark grain of walnut, dark women’s bodies, flower-shadows in paintings by sisters. 1632 Walnut Street: the solid multiples of eight like a vintage Oldsmobile, the curves of the numbers, the porch, its roof, the porch light shaped a little by…
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