As soon as you stop and rest you see more hills ahead, Great chains of hills to some improbable horizon. Will it always be like this? you ask yourself. Don’t let the hills tower over you, Don’t let their shadows creep before mid-afternoon And when they come, savour the blue. Enjoy the flatness of the
The imagined day includes sunshine and shopping And people saying Yes and being on my side. There’ll also be traffic and occasional drizzle So I know I haven’t died.
If you were still alive You would be ninety-six tomorrow. I think of you most days. Just now, for example, I heard you Defending the word ‘folk’ When, sometime in the Eighties, I said it was twee. Another day, I see you doing the weeding At my sister’s wedding And another day still You’re at
Have you looked across the Sound? On the other shore life lies. Can you see it over there? The palaces, the esplanade? It only takes a little while to cross, A year or two at most, sometimes just days. In clear weather you’ll see boats leaving the marina, The scarlet awnings of the shops And
It came at last, the letting-go, Up over the hill and down our street — The end of time had, finally, been reached. There was comfort in it, the worst happening And it being of no consequence, since we were done for. What did it matter if our digital photo frames were lost, Our data-carrying