We were sitting as usual by the window
gazing at the wintry trees
You began to cry out;
The house is under attack,
A storm is coming .
The glass windows will shatter
We’ll be stabbed.
We’ll be injured
We’ll be killed I must get out
Looking out .I saw only the calm bare branches
Of the maple
And two wood pigeons in the fir tree
were chuckling to each other.
The wind had not changed.
I know it’s midwinter with the bitter
breeze with an edge to it like a knife.
The sun low like lemonade in an almost emptied glass.
Semding light through the forsythia onto the bent old fence.
I turned to you puzzled
Reached out my hands to comfort;
But you shouted
Keep away
as you got your thick coat out
and ran from the back door right into the dark woods.
If there was real danger,why did you desert me?
Years later you told me of bad news you’d had.
Seemed like the inside and outside got confused.
I became a Fascist.I was a flaxen Anglo-Saxon.
I was Hitler’s grand-daughter.
I was a descendant of the Borgia Pope.
A witch , a demon, a torturer.
You believed that
I would break my glass; cut your face
with the jagged edges amd laugh
like we once saw in a film.
Unlike in science,
We can’t go back and repeat the experience
as if it were an experiment.
See if we were drawing the right conclusions
If you’d stayed a few minutes more
You might have realised
You were half asleep
And dreaming.
It was a daymare that escaped.
Once gone,you never returned
To the house where it seemed the glass broke
into shards and cut you to shreds.
And a possessed woman loved you.
I don’t blame you
though I weep.
We are often deceived by our imaginations
We see not what’s here
But what we most fear.
And flee the human contact
Which alone might help.
I always leave the door ajar
And some food on the kitchen table;
In case you come back hungry and tired.
It was your mind that shattered,not the glass…
And that’s much harder to mend.
But it can be done
If you stop fighting.
And let the inner seas flow free.
You need a hand
But it also frightens you.
Besides, my hand is not strong enough to hold you.
Only to touch you gently
To say how sad I am
How my heart sings 