They dribble down the High Street/ in dribs and drabs, on sticks,
the wrinkle-faced old women,/ the men with “past it” pricks,
slow among the mums who/ wrestle with push-chair kids,

The Colonel didn’t like him (my guess).
He called him Mr. Wilkinson-Noble
(there was another officer in the unit called Wilkinson).

“Are you interested in knowing when and whom you will marry? What the year will bring you? If you will gain in a law- suit?… What are you best adapted for? If you have enemies and who?

“We have always been here,” you tell me.
There we were. I am in a cafe
in New York in early spring.

I have a trigger for you, a bus stop, a way out.

nothing sufficient has yet been said about stone

Forgive me, it is what I made of you
In squalls, in Mardi Gras and ballyhoo.

Believe the sullen sense that sickness made,
And broke you in its hands.

In the two photographs I have of her,
taken over ten years apart, she wears
the same plain dress. In the first,

From Vienna it’s picture-postcard all the way.
Tell me, was ever such a land at ease!
The fat farms glistening, the polished pigs.