There are more changes each time I return

Two widows are living together in the attic

Among the encyclopedias

And gold vestments.

                                  A fishmonger

Opens his shop at the angle of the stairs.

The scullery I see has been extended,

A wide cloister, thatched, with swallows

Nesting over windows, now hides the garden.

I wake in Rome, and my brother, aged fifteen, meets me.

My father has sent him with a naggin of coffee and brandy,

which I drink on the platform.

And wake again in an afternoon bed

Grey light sloping from windowledge

To straw-seated armchair. I get up,

Walk down a silent corridor

To the kitchen. Twilight and a long scrubbed table,

The tap drips in an enamel basin

Containing peeled potatoes. A door half-open and

I can hear somebody snoring.