(in memoriam Roy Fuller, 1912-1991)
Tourist In Winter
Bring sugar for the children and honey
for the bears, connive at forgetting
what weather will be waiting, sunny
or sad, tiles lit white or gables wetting
monotonous on the walkways below.
The sallyports crackled with melting ice,
a sexy cartoon silhouette on the snow
and nerves passed round like after-dinner mints.
St. George’s stained-glass, a chaos of tints
and sharp geometry, as if to show
the headache brilliance of virtue over vice.
Cups of tea, gloves off so as to blow
frozen fingers into life again, a fast
summation and the tour ended at last.
The Old Comrades
They found each other, so the partisan
story goes, shouting on the reviewing stand
one patriotic dusk, the latest enemy
buried under slogans and rhetorical debris.
The Revolution coaxed their love along
and History was a family friend, grim beside
the tea service and the night-nurse’s gong,
waiting for news of those who’d died.
Each time there were fewer words
to speak, fewer jokes the simplicity
of which allowed for mild justice.
Dust was to blame, and prejudice
that latched the windows out of pity,
to quarantine the wild, singing birds.