Cool as a milk churn, bare as a mountain field,
A smoulder of sods in the grate, that winter scent
Before I came to know her, this room did; the chair,
The butter-coloured walls, the grey wainscotting. Her
Coty powder perfumed its air for an hour
A voice complains outside; a delay at the Junction And Blackie neighs in
the station-yard as my ghostly
Grandfather gives him the nod. Now they've gone.
She was a girl in a red coat going back to Dublin.
Some stranger maybe combing her hair half-saw
That precious face in the mirror and remarked
The train was late. My mother, I imagine, agreed;
Politely, absently, as she often did . . . Briefly, I am she.
But what else she said, or really thought, is lost to me.
From The Beauty of the Moon, published this week by Chatto and Windus at £7.99 in UK