Snow-cakes banked the streets. Frozen grey
Barricades of dirty sugar. Hard
Cold. Cold
His morning flat in bright sun,
Sooted in Soho. Brick light. New light.
Cargo-dumped empty lightness.
Packing-case emptiness, lightness. Ice-breaker
Her bows had butted through, the missing supplies
Warm in her hold. Cracked through the frozen sea
A rigid lightning of icy but open water
Where she moved closer. So here he was.
She had got what she wanted – to see
The islet or reef or rock he’d ended up on.
Her eyes went over the walls and into
Every corner, like a dog in a new home. Like a dog
That had seen a rat vanish, that smelt a rat.
There was his bed, yes. There was his phone.
But she had that number. Most of all
She wanted his assurance, weeping she begged
For assurance he had faith in her. Yes, yes. Tell me
We shall sit together this summer
Under the laburnum. Yes, he said, yes yes yes.
The laburnum draped deathly in the blue dusk.
The laburnum like a dressed corpse in full yellow.
The huge clock of the laburnum stuck at noon,
Striking noon noon noon –
What kind of faith did she mean? Yes, he had faith.
He had promised her everything she asked for,
And she had told him all she wanted
Was for him to get out of the country, to vanish.
I’ll do whatever you want. But which do you want?
Or for me to vanish off the earth?
She wept, pleading for reassurance – that he have
Faith in her, and he reeled when he should have grabbed:
‘Do as you like with me. I’m your parcel.
I have only our address on me.
Open me or readdress me.’ Then
She saw his Shakespeare. The red Oxford Shakespeare
That she had ripped to rags when happiness
Was invulnerable. Resurrected.
Wondering, with unbelieving fingers,
She opened it. She read the inscription. She closed it
Like the running animal that receives
The fatal bullet without a faltering check
In its stride, she started again
Begging for that reassurance and he gave it
Over and over and over and over he gave
What she did not want or did
Want and could no longer accept or open
Helpless-handed as she hid from him
The wound she had given herself, striking at him
Had given herself, that had emptied
From her hands the strength to hold him against
The shock of her words from nowhere, that had
Fatally gone through her and hit him.