Even so distant, I can taste the grief, Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp. The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief Worry of wheels along the street outside Where bridal London bows the other way, And light, unanswerable and tall and wide, Forbids the scar to heal, and drives Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day, Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare Console you if I could. What can be said, Except that suffering is exact, but where Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic? For you would hardly care That you were less deceived, out on that bed, Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently. Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind