Any emotion can be made to seem sentimental,
Mother says. Purity calls for diligence,
not a wallowing, she says, so why
did I go to this film at this particular time?
To thrash myself with the knowledge, not
the feeling, that my lover Chris has taken
an Alfred the Great in a very Anglo-Saxon way?
In what imaginable way could Charlotte Vale
help me accept the way of the stars when
my sign is the same as Jerry’s, under the moon?
That sense of setting off on a cruise, was it