From: FENESTRA
HIDDEN
Where was it hidden,
this poem,
before it comes out of my head?
I look out of the window, but it isn't there:
only birds,
which do not sing at this time of year
usually.
It might have been up in the silver birch,
in the thin branches,
swaying slightly.
Or coming across the sky,
gradually,
like clouds.
It might have been a small speck in the distance,
between the rooftops:
something you can't see exactly
but which seems to be there.
CHRISTMAS IS OVER
Christmas is over
for another year.
The geese got fat and were eaten
although not by us
who always prefer turkey.
The family grew, steadily,
until they were all there
chattering, drinking, eating.
I moved among them
filled with the joy that is family
but can never be spoken:
all the faces we love,
that grow around us like flowers
and are gathered in:
crowded on settees,
perched on chairs,
or hovering in odd corners,
half in the light, half in the shade.
Such laughter.
Such an exchange of bounty.
Such kisses and, closer than close,
the truest of embraces.
And such departure.
WHY SO DARK?
Why is it so dark this winter?
“That is no country for old men,” Yeats said,
referring no doubt to where he had come from,
or a place, perhaps, where he was going.
It was snowing at the time, I remember.
I bumped into him outside Jarrold's.
He said he fancied a coffee,
but I thought otherwise
and said otherwise,
to his face,
there and then.
After all, we were both,
in a way,
on the same journey,
and were roughly the same age
except that I was, in fact, a little older
and had a different view of life:
preferring a mug of tea on the market
to sitting around
being waited on by subservient wenches
old aristocrat that he was.
Hardy, another old man,
a little older than I am,
said that he wished his heart
had shrunk as much as his skin had.
A funny thing to say, really.
I mean, a heart is a heart,
when all's said and done
and although he didn't mean that pumping thing
inside the rib cage,
feelings don't actually shrink, do they?
They're not like sheets and things,
or vests,
or socks that hurt when you tug them on.
And, in any case, skin
when you get older, slackens.
BIRDS AROUND THE FEEDER
I peer through the window at birds
around the feeder:
great tits, blue tits,
a couple of chaffinches.
And even, once,
a very clever magpie
who cocked his head on one side,
as of one who would think,
and reached carefully down with one claw
to the fatball
hooked it up,
held it,
and pecked
once,
twice,
three times.
All very satisfactory, somehow,
though somewhat mystifying
to the little birds that fluttered all around.
And to me,
white haired, bearded, and peering
out into the winter garden that, strangely,
belongs to us.
SUMS
Some people are very good at sums.
They can add up anything
take things away
mutiply and divide
just like that.
In the twinkling of an eye
they are streets ahead of the rest of us,
as we lounge on street corners
staring, with intolerable incomprehension,
at the fog.
Some people, with very large foreheads,
can do even bigger sums.
They are older and, probably, married
with four or five children perhaps.
They write weird hieroglyphics on whiteboards
and pace the room
tapping their large foreheads
as they wait for things to come.
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