Considering all things and their seasons,

Last night I rose to call you, full of delight:

Can we dine together, tonight or any night?

Candles, glasses, I had the whole thing framed

And zoomed. Then stopped. The toad of doubt

Filled the room. Everything swung about

Half-circle. I think it won’t swing back.

I have my reasons.

Your husband hated my bones. Dead

Ten years, the slightest thought of him can goad

Me backwards into anger. The way he carked Not so!

Or fingered the thin fuzz on his weasel head

When bested in an argument, the dumb

Weight of his scholarship that hung

Like bags of fool’s gold under his eyes.

Casaubon in the desert: a dried-up tarn.

Round him nothing flowed.

Should I dine with you tonight, or any night,

He will invite himself, sour ghost.

He’ll spread his elbows everywhere. The toast

Will turn to wood-chips, the vol-au-vent

Spawn spiders who’ll multiply and starve

The evening with their hairy eyes.

They’ll clog our mouths with silence.

Dead or alive.

We carry our spouses everywhere.

They cling to us like varnish to a chair.

For many years, a liminal man, I’ve loved

You well, the way you moved

Round difficult things so lightly, lightly –

And found an elegant thing to do

Or say, while I – correct and diffident –

Admired, and told no one at all,

Not even you.

The blade of prudence has a double edge, e verro?

It can turn around and spike you like an arrow.

And even while our varnish chips and cracks

It’s still the same:

His breath will smother every flame

And you will hurry off and rub your hand

Across the chilled vinyl of his bucket-seat

And flick the radio and drive off fast

While a saxophone blares

Across black snowdrifts – all three of us

Separate now, disaffection rising

To mingle with the stars.