Mi último adios & Hope Hospital
by Peter Robinson
[ poetry - december 05 ]
Mi último adios
My last goodbye
to an imaginary love
began with an earful from some irate neighbour.
I’d rung the wrong bell for the flat above
set in London brick beside your door.
Visibly shaken,
I should have known before;
but here you were as good as saying
there wouldn’t be a space my size any more
in the journal of your going or staying.
As day slid by,
sun moved round attic windows.
Likewise, it couldn’t be long before you went
westward and out beyond the Andes -
as I would as soon to my Orient.
Hope Hospital
for my parents
It was one of those mild days towards winter’s end
when a sun’s lengthy shadows make you think
of what the weather might have been back then.
I’m laid on my spine here gazing from the pram
into a blue and white, cloud-tracked sky
this fine March day more than fifty years ago.
As sunshine changes, clouds arrive or leave,
being part of earth’s vast annual routine,
they signal to your first-born that he is alive.
So, yes, you could surely wonder how or why
this kind of thing began, if it began
here on the front path at 10 Duffield Road
with infinite varieties of light effect, of line
that take me back, take me aback - and yet
those quiet hours where hope would objects find,
aren’t they exactly what I’m destined to forget?
