A Malvern Marriage
The oak has turned its wrist and made
A bicep bulge. I've never climbed
Up by this path before although
I live just round the hill. It prompts
The restless child in me to dream
A disappearance fantasy:
My death is generally assumed;
My wife collects insurances;
But I'm still living parallel,
A road or two away. One day
I reappear like this, re-born
By bursting through an old stone wall,
Descending all these forty steps,
A step for every narrow year.
It's quaint how paths we fail to see
By root-beknuckled entrances,
Behind church-gates, on private drives
So nearly overgrown, lead up
The hill to give new outlooks on
The worn-out land. We may pass by
For ever, never see things quite
This way. Each walk along the safe
Volcanic hills, so rounded now,
Domesticated like a park,
We try to find new ways and we
Succeed. As in a marriage, just
When we begin to hate the known
And beautiful long contours, firm
Constraints, there's still surprise and we
Stay faithful to our well-worn ridge,
This graceful incongruity
Of island rising from a flat,
Scarred, fenced-in, fruitful river-bed.
The Widow's Dream
Downstairs, she feels a sudden shift of air.
Rustling the fresh paper, he lets it rest;
Its great slack sheets enfold his lap like sails,
Near the steaming kettle, the loaf of bread,
The draining-board. He's like an architect
With plans, his mouth a straight line holding breath;
He's concentratedly construing clues.
She wrestles sheets and fights to leave her bed,
To rush, this moment, down the stairs.
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