Plague Sonnet 

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                   In a Time of Pestilence

 

My thin long arms stretch wide, the distance friends

and strangers, cousins too, must keep away

if we’re to stay alive, so when it ends –

they’re not sure how, but think it must, one day –

we’ll all of us ( those left, that is) come close

again, much closer than before, and find

the world’s far kindlier than we supposed,

and might have seen, had doubt not made us blind.

 

But, for now, I’ll wrap my arms around you

and halfway round myself, take you to bed

and huddle there, however long the curfew

lasts, hope to keep at bay what lies ahead.

And if it comes, to catch us arm in arm,

let’s pray it wants us both and halves the harm.

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                  Sonnets for a Wife

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                 At Banyuls-sur-Mer

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That whitewashed hilltop chapel, the town square

waking under plane trees, far-off mountains

bleached by sun - all of this within a year

we'll just recall as France, somewhere, or Spain

perhaps, its distinctive sounds, smells and sights

stirred together in memory's melting pot:

half a lifetime's hill towns, grandes places, resorts

left traceless, names and places peeled apart.

Much as you and I, love, since student days

have blended, the one into the other,

until the telling flavour that endures

is singular - of each of us, yet neither.

And now I've little taste for who I was

without you, nor yen for being otherwise.

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                   Stoic

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...and these, my many complaints,

I should keep at the door

like callers on a wintry night,

spoken to with courtesy,

even a smile;

but never invited in

for the warmth of the house,

to stretch out in its intimacy

of scattered shoes

and simmering pots,

half-read forgotten books,

coats cast across settees,

faded anniversaries on the mantelshelf.

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They will call again tomorrow

and the following nights,

hankering for the heat of our fire,

plausible and cousinly.

Yet still I'll keep the chain across

full-stretch

for fear I should soften

and let them in.

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