We keep coming back, the widow and I,
To knock on each other's door
With our tale of abandonment, life of wanderings,
Dark pre-history…
Unprovided for
Didn't she start some kind of boarding-house,
Follow me north, on the Reina del Mar,
My lady of sorrows? Now she is watching me,
Through a window in greater London,
The widow, as I cast about
In her garden of long grass, her junkyard of Eden,
For a lever, a latch-key, some way in
To the first address, and the hurt of origin.

Death means nothing between us. Ever-living,
Seeing each other, face on face
Ancestral, mirrored in the double-glaze
Of time and space….
I have circled back
Through all these years, to bring it home to her -
The ocean of loneliness, once long ago.
Be not afraid, I say to her. Admit me, your godson.
We have been alone too long,
The pair of us, and been turned away
From too many doors, for the world to be anything
Better than common lodging
Between us now, who have only each other.

Harry Clifton’s most recent book of poems is Herod’s Dispensation (Bloodaxe)