The security of love
The comfort of home
       The sun is above
    Yet I'm still
       So alone

The Earth is my heart
The Sun is my lust
       So I stand in the dark
    For I know
       I must

Avoiding my lust
Indulging my trust
       I stare at the sun
    But I know
       I can't touch

In the worst hour of the worst season
    of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
    He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
    Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
    There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
    Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Is this you in the wedding
Photograph? Yes. St Mark’s church.
1951. Late June.
Your hair looks nice, and the dress

Looks fine. Not mine. It was the
One my mother wore and her
Mother before her. A white
Handed down family gift

For marriages that end in
Doom. Your husband looks dapper
Hanging onto your arm like
Grim death. Don’t waste you breath on

Him he’s gone now. Was he no
Good? He thought he was the dog’s
Dinner but he was the pig’s
Backside and no mistake. Gone

You say? Dead? Long since and no
Regrets. Why keep the photo
If it was bad? To remind
Me of that fateful day and

His thin sickly smile. Why so?
Why keep it thus? To remind
Me of his premature death,
The grimfaced miserable cuss.

(Poem composed in 2008.)