On the Death of a Sunday Painter

He smoked a cherry-wood pipe, knew all about cannas,

And deplored our lack of a genuine fast bowler.

My uncle called his wife Soft Hands.

Once in 1936 as he sat reading Ulysses

In his Holland Hall drawing-room, a student walked in.

Years later I read him an essay on D.H. Lawrence

And the Imagists. He listened,

Then spoke of Lord Clive, the travels of Charles Doughty,

“My dear young fellow . . .”

I followed the mourners on my bicycle

And left early. His friends watched the cremation

From the portico of a nearby house.