Our first home has forgotten us.
I saw when I drove past it
How slight our lives had been
To have left not a trace. When we first moved in there
I looked for omens.
Vacated by a widow gathered to her family
All it told me was: ‘Her life is over.’
She had left the last blood of her husband
Staining a pillow. Their whole story
Hung – a miasma – round that stain.
Senility’s sour odour. It had condensed
Like a grease on the cutlery. It confirmed
Your idea of England: part
Nursing home, part morgue
For something partly dying, partly dead.
Just so the grease-grimed shelves, the tacky, dark walls
Of the hutch of a kitchen revolted you
Into a fury of scouring. I studied the blood.
Was it mouth-blood, or ear-blood,
Or the blood of a head-wound, after some fall?
I took possession before
Anything of ours had reconditioned
That crypt of old griefs and its stale gas
Of a dead husband. I claimed our first home
Alone and slept in it alone,
Only trying not to inhale the ghost
That clung on in the breath of the bed.
His death and her bereavement
Were the sole guests at our house-warming.
We splurged ten pounds on a sumptuous Chesterfield
Of Prussian blue velvet. Our emergency
Kit of kitchen gadgets adapted
That rented, abandoned, used-up grubbiness
To the shipyard and ritual launching
Of our expedition. One mirage
Of the world as it is and has to be
Seemed no worse than another. Already
We were beyond the Albatross.
You yourself were a whole Antarctic sea
Between me and your girl-friends. You were pack-ice
Between me and any possible mention
Of my might-have-beens. I had accepted
The meteorological phenomena
That kept your compass steady.
Like polar apparitions only Wendy
And Dorothea, by being visionary
Fairy godmothers, were forgiven their faces.
I pitied your delirium of suspicion.
Through the rainbow darkness I plodded,
Following a clue of Patanjali.
Hand in hand we plodded. For me, that home
Was our first camp, our first winter,
Where I was happy to stare at a candle.
For you, it was igloo comfort.
Your Bell Jar centrally heated
By a stupefying paraffin heater.
But you were happy too, warming your hands
At the crystal ball
Of your heirloom paperweight. Inside it,
There, in miniature, was your New England Christmas,
A Mummy and a Daddy, still together
Under the whirling snow, and our future.