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.
Sending 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 were 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 and 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 woman loved you.
How my heart speaks 