Included is a poem I wrote in 1985: The Student Flat. I must have been pleasantly astonished at the time to find myself in such august company. Rereading the poem now, it seems I was hell-bent on having exactly eight syllables per line.
The final phrase of the poem is "seventeen years". When the poem was republished in Cellos in Hell, this became "twenty years". A syllable lost! Clearly, this final line needs to be updated annually. Maybe I should just settle for "countless years".
Anyway, here's what I was writing twenty-eight years ago. (If you're reading this in 2014, make that "twenty-nine years ago".)
The Student Flat
The electric fire's one bar glowed
dully, half-smothered, its dust skin
of talc holding back the heat. In
a far-distant corner the dark
morning was ruffled by the hoarse
scrape of your tinny tranny; you'd
painted its case with flowers. Should
I wake you? Condensation dropped
down the black window glass like cold
tears; the thin curtains couldn't meet,
didn't quite fit. You slept, the sheet
wound round your strange nakedness. Cars
and buses edged into the dawn.
I saw two sticky coffee mugs,
some underclothes slumped on worn rugs.
An inch of cider still remained,
half-accusing. The staleness of the
spreading ashtray clung to the dead
air and my skin. Your single bed
sank in the middle and I ached
for you in the pale fireglow in
that old house full of strangers. I
woke you for the new term. Your sigh
was a little girl's; you blinked and
were surprised to see me that dawn
in 1968 when rain
made the roofs shine and I had lain
beside you in a night as brief
as a smile. The room was filled for
me with wonder a I am now
when I blink with surprise at how
you were so prepared to allow
me to stay that first October night
and then these seventeen years.
*
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