then another,

or knew her

favourite colour,

her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,

or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive

of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb

where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,

where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart

in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,

and never once described

an attack of the heart,

or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,

her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,

where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,

or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,

or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,

or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,

or said “Don’t ask me to say how it is

I like you.

I just might do.”

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,

or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball

of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,

and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them—

sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,

about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.

MR. ROBINSON’S HOLIDAY

As if gravity had brought him here, down

through the matrix of the minor counties

to the South West where the mainland dips its toe

in the ocean. From the cliff, with the viewfinder,

Robinson trained on a seal in the bay coming up

like a spaceman. And in the guesthouse,

Robinson giving a bogus address, not wanting

the landlord’s friends to visit his place, force

the window casements, try on his wardrobe

in the full-length mirror, load up with photographs

and tapes or help themselves to a cooked breakfast.

Robinson thinking this is ridiculous, Robinson.

One word about the weather: uncertain. One sock

in his coat pocket, that’s odd, and for the upkeep

of this private shore, Robinson slotting a hermit crab

in the honesty-box. Time on his hands:

Robinson at the beach, baking slowly like a loaf

for hours, shaking down behind the windbreak,

then all evening finding sand running out

from unlikely places. The mark where his watch was—

a good day’s work, Robinson. As for St. Michael’s Mount

he would rather die than pay the ferryman, and

in the hour before high tide on the flooded causeway—

Robinson ghost-like and up to his neck in it.

Look, it is overwhelming; the air at St. Ives

so good he could take a slice and frame it,

and this the town where the smell of fish

once stopped a clock. Robinson not one