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Experiment 13

Letter At The Close Of Winter

Letter At The Close Of Winter

(for Alan Ivory)

You speak of autumn; and suddenly
I have heard it all before.
Yes, heard it until every word
is as dead as the leaves I trample
walking across the cricket ground
to post my mail. And the fear
that your nervous tension will
one day ceased to force out poems
haunts us all. What will become
of us? We are all damned to speculate.

Am I sure of what you are looking
for? I don't know; I have my own
problems. My life is like
a crucifix come unstuck from a wall
out of negligence. Who's to blame?
God knows. My grasp of most things
is feeble enough, but this I do
know; we see things like conquerors,
as an old photographer sorting
through a box of negatives
believing as real what are only hopes.

P F Ireland.