EX-WIFE: HOMESICKNESS

ALAN SHAPIRO

Voice that would wake me

in the bland American

too anywhereness

of the rented room we lived in,—

on those last nights

together when realizing

you would soon leave

seemed to revive so

cruelly our earliest delights

in one another;

voice not meant for my ears,

risen, it seemed, from some

never before sounded

privacy within you,

permitting you to hear—

as you murmured that

you wanted to go home

to Ireland, home, home,—

how the word you thought

would speak only your longing

now spoke grief, spoke

dread, and not for me,

or us, or anything

at all you’d leave behind,

but for the very thing

you wanted to go home to,

everything you’d find

before the hearth fire,

drink in hand, sheer

animal solace in the sound

of wind and slant rain

at the gabled window,

against the roof and walls,

the room all lair, all burrow,

and you within it safer

for the storm’s familiar

harrowing that kept

your need to be at home

there, always,

not inordinate.