– 42 –

II

Here is the inside of the woman's flat:
its walls lined with black and white
photographs of her departed lover—intact
and glossy, drawing-pinned
to the wall.
Also photographs of the sad woman herself,
smiling at an invisible other, biting into
an apple.

The walls are damp with grief,
and the woman's voice, telling of the
empty days stretching ahead,
drips down the walls.
She tells of that other time.
She and her lover lay on the candlewick
bedspread.
The indentation, the slight warmth
they left there would soon be gone.
Loss was already with them—something
subtle, something cruel,
something they couldn't
talk about.

She tells of that other time.
Two different people inhabited the same
body of light, the same body
of shade, the same bathtub,
the same telephone.
And then the woman asked the man
not to use her towel, to please
remove all his possessions from her flat,
down to the very last nail,
the very last hammer.

– 43 –

The rest, the things left lying
in the bottom of the wardrobe,
on the far side of the bed,
the things which slyly revealed
themselves over time, these things too
must be got rid of.

The woman wants reassurance that
she has a real body with arms and legs
and hands and feet,
and a particular way of walking,
which her friends, seeing her at a distance,
will recognise.
She wants to know that her shoes flatten
blades of grass.
Where she walks, a twig snaps.
Sap oozes from a stem where she
breaks off a leaf.

She reads a book in which
the poet says—I want to write as simply
as I pick a blade of grass.
She says, I want to forget you as simply
as I pick a blade of grass.
Later I hold this piece of grass
between my thumbs.
I blow on it—something
to cherish, something to make
music with.

Steam from the kettle surrounds her,
steam from the kettle clouds
the window so that she can
no longer see out.

The pattern of the bedspread is large.
A pale landscape with yellow flowers.

– 44 –

Stalks bend and tremble
and scatter their seed.
She is sown with sadness,
the seeds of loss.
Take root, she says, there will be
plenty of rain. The wind the wind,
how it grazes everything in its path.

A collage of traffic and the hard
glitter of a river running
through it.
A river of tears.
She tears the last little bits
from the background.