It’s cold again; come closer to the fire, the light,

and let me make you out.

How have you hurt me, let me count the ways:

the months of Sundays

when you left me in the damp, the dark,

the red, or down and out, or out of work.

The weeks on end of bread without butter,

bed without supper.

That time I fell through Schofield’s shed

and broke both legs,

and Schofield couldn’t spare to split

one stick of furniture to make a splint.

Thirteen weeks I sat there till they set.

What can the poor do but wait? And wait.

How come you’re struck with me? Go see the Queen,

lean on the doctor or the dean,

breathe on the major,

squeeze the mason or the manager,

go down to London, find a novelist at least

to bother with, to bleed, to leech.

On second thoughts, stay put.

A person needs to get a person close enough

to stab him in the back.

Robert Frost said that. Besides,

I’d rather keep you in the corner of my eye

than wait for you to join me side by side

at every turn, on every street, in every town.

Sit down. I said sit down.

PARABLE OF THE DEAD DONKEY

Instructions arrived by registered post

under cover of separate envelopes:

directions first

to pinpoint the place

in the shape of maps and compass bearings;

those, then forms and stamps for loss of earnings.

So much was paid

to diggers of graves

by keepers or next of kin, peg leg

(which made for the dumping of quadrupeds):

sixteen quid

to send off a pig

or sink a pit for a dog or pony.

But less to plant a man than a donkey.

Cheaper by half

for a pregnant horse

that died with all four hooves inside her

than one with a stillborn foal beside her.

And this was a bind,

being duty bound

where ownership was unestablished.

We filled the flasks and loaded the Transit,

then set out, making

for the undertaking.

Facing north, he was dead at three o’clock

in a ring of meadow grass, closely cropped,

where a metal chain

on a wooden stake

had stopped him ambling off at an angle,

worn him down in a perfect circle.

We burrowed in

right next to him

through firm white soil. An hour’s hard labour

took us five feet down—and then the weather:

thunder biting

the heels of lightning,

a cloudburst drawing a curtain of rain

across us, filling the bath of the grave,

and we waded in it

for one more minute,

dredged and shovelled as the tide was rising,

bailed out for fear of drowning, capsizing.

Back on top

we weighed him up,

gave some thought to this beast of the Bible:

the nose and muzzle, the teeth, the eyeballs,

the rump, the hindquarters,

the flanks, the shoulders,

everything soothed in the oil of the rain—

the eel of his tongue, the keel of his spine,

the rope of his tail,