Dusty answer
by Julia Deakin
[ poetry - january 08 ]
Lady, let's get this straight. That night you crashed up here
you woke the neighbours, shattering the silence like a diva.
Then you left early, when small morning courtesies
would have cost no more than the gin you finished
readily enough. You snored, too, as I recall: I turned my back,
glad of patterned wallpaper. You think I didn't sense you
prowling round, bumping into things as if to say you needed
space, more space. This is London. What did you expect
up all these stairs - a ranch? I heard you sniff, felt you
purse your lips and rip at everything with those incisor eyes.
Well let me tell you, when you're old that's what life is:
clutter. An unsightly mess of blessings, burdens and ephemera.
Pots break, windows get stuck down. You may flaunt
the scanty ingenuities of youth - white walls, straw mats,
babies and balloons. In winter, this place freezes.
'Tenant mice' must shift to take the edge off, keep warm,
stay the course. Red cushions are a comfort - a flat warming gift;
your art's in words, mine in cherishing such kindnesses.
What's more without a family, I have to be my own child
and mother - afford myself the love yours no doubt give you.
If you had striven for cosiness alone and got through decades
single-handed, you would not, I think, court emptiness.
No, I did not remove the roses before their malady offended -
you who were telling me you had sought out cadavers.
I don't deliberately keep wilting blooms, but as it happens
I can live with them: there is a certain lesson in their grace.
While you won scholarships in so-called taste, I learned
to take what comes and make the best of it. You have your prizes,
leave me mine. Given youth again I might choose differently
but could do worse. Some people there's no pleasing;
I fill the room with life: if you see death, that's your affair.
As I see it, you came, lapped up my hospitality and left
not empty-handed, but appropriating most of what I owned
to make a poem you wasted no time airing. I suppose
I should have known: you artists are all at it - thieving
for a living. Miss Bishop, mind you, was a little better-mannered.
At least, she seemed to find the dust amusing.
