All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

So much I gazed on beauty,
that my vision is replete with it.

Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs.
Hair as if taken from greek statues;
always beautiful, even when uncombed,
and it falls, slightly, over white foreheads.
Faces of love, as my poetry
wanted them.... in the nights of my youth,
in my nights, secretly, met....

I  walked  past  my  old  house  today
it  had  changed -  new  modern  windows
And  doors.

The  garden  looked  the  same
Although  it  wasn't  as  well  kept  as  I  remembered  it.

I  passed  the  old  Co-op  shop
Where  I  started  work  at  fifteen.
Sadly  it  is  now  an  antique  shop.

I  climbed  Woodbank,  a  steep  hill  in   the  village
The  landscape  had  changed  little
Except  for  a  motorway  cutting  through  it.

The  old  canteen- where  I  used  to  deliver  groceries-
Had  disappeared  without  trace.

Also  the  indoor  tennis  courts  had  gone
Replaced  by  new  bungalows.

Yes,  a  lot  of  changes  have  taken  place
Since  I  left  in  1957.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK.  2016.  
      
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