Much as I loved you in the snow and ice,
Side-slipping down the chute below Spinale –
It’s twenty years now since we saw Madonna
(Di Campiglio, not Ciconne)
Can you believe it? – in your deep leaf-green
Completa, the first year in your white boots,
Trim as a model when you stood to pose
For a picture nothing, surely, could screw up
Except, as it turned out, your sweet lifelong
Self-consciousness: much as I loved your look
In that white world, I still thought the back-drop
Best suited to you was sand, surf and sun,
Perhaps because when we first knew each other
Bronte and Bondi were the places where
I got to see enough bare skin to know
You really were that shape under your clothes.
I had a thing about your collarbones:
Still have, in fact. This year I can’t be there,
Down on the CÔte des Basques, to see the pink
Sunset behind your outline as you watch
Our granddaughter cartwheeling on the thin
Edge of the wave, you in your floppy hat,
She running pint-sized death-defying risks
For your applause. But I’ll get well again,
And be there next year for one more reminder
That what we mainly fall for is proportion.
Yes, texture too, which time won’t let us keep,
And even the prettiest hands will show their age
As a fine nib makes maps on unmarked vellum,
But what we love at last was there at first
In her that caught our eye. The way of standing,
The poise suggesting it would stay that way
Through all the years to come, the nervous smile
That said: ‘I have no talent for pretending.’
The beauty, edged with blue sky yet unending.

CONTENTS: SEPTEMBER 2011