for Michael Hofmann
Unshaven and barefoot, as if on a pilgrimage.
His house is blue: the walls, the carpet, the cups;
the kind of blue you see in sad monasteries,
the paint veined and peeling, with brittle bits of gold
hanging on in the rims. Like Gottfried Benn –
a spiritual father figure – he likes to stay home,
where the coffee’s better and there’s no small-talk.
He seems scattered, has lost a book somewhere:
a translation. All his life he has hidden a language;
now he eats, breathes and interprets it. Later,
our awkwardness spills over Hampstead Heath,
where we walk, mostly in silence. We have soup
and beer around the corner, then take a short-cut
to the bus stop, and he’s gone; brought by the wind,
taken back by it: the soft-spoken wunderkind of despair.