For a while I shall still be leaving.
Looking back at you as you slip away
Into the magic islands of the mind.

Coming into eighty
I slow my ship down
For a safe landing.

Yes, I am home again, and alone.
Today wrote letters, then took my dog
Out through the sad November woods.

There is a thin glass
Between me and everything I see.
The glass is pain.

Becoming eighty
Might be nothing much
If I could be well,

Avenging ivy padding up the wall of the Abbey’s west wing
Could only be part of a masterplan to rescue posterity
From a curling, yellowing, nonetheless dangerous manuscript

We prefer to call it Le Système D,
the labyrinth of our permanent exile,
the magic houses and identity cards:

the ladder keeps going. The black dust

that peels the paint off your car

For the sin of pride the authorities made me wear this little hat. It fits me no better than a baby turtle, this blue plastic derby secured by a rubberband round the chin. Though I was allowed to stay on in my high position, my authority was subverted like a poster scrawled over with mustaches and black teeth. 

                                         In Montmartre, far from the sea he loved, crippled 
                                         by arthritis, Corbière nailed up over his chimney 
                                         the dried carcass of a toad.