TELLING HIM JENNY

'Tell me the poem...Sonny! '
(he always called me '...Sonny!')

'Tell me... Jenny! '

I recite
('I love your voice...Sonny! ')

as I bathe him
'JENNY KISSED ME.'

He always asks
again & again

'Who is it by...Sonny? '
And I tell him

again & again.
'It's Leigh Hunt...Johnny! '

( He never remembers. )

He closes his eyes
recites along with me

saying the words
silently

his lips trembling
with their beauty.

He always cries
when I come to the end

& begs again
for me to tell him

'...Jenny.'

I ask him
if there was a Jenny?

And he says: 'No...
her name was Molly.'

'But, it's near
...enough! '

My hands
attend him as he dies

I whisper
in his ear

not the priest's
act of contrition

but the words
he loved to hear

I still hear his voice
speaking in silence

mouthing each
invisible word

'...say I am growing old
but add...Jenny kissed me."

*

JENNY KISS'D ME

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.

Leigh Hunt