Is it compassion that lingers around objects?
Take this ashtray, choked with cigarettes,
the can of beer, or that worn leather armchair
with the scored upholstery, the colour TV.
He suspected as much, being a sensitive man.
The rest belonged to his wife. The plastic
vegetable rack which survives them both,
the sacked wardrobe, the scattered clothes –
That cracked decanter in Venetian glass,
bought on their honeymoon, he always said.
It used to stand over there by the window
(I remember the marriage of light and gold).
Of course, he broke it like everything else,
You can still see the mark on the wall.


He used to fondle it for hours, watching
the light sift through it like sand.
As if he divined something of the lives
that handled it, something he lacked.
Remorse perhaps, the need for absolution?
I suspected as much, being a sensitive child.
He threw his life at her for twenty years;
he aimed to miss and hit her every time.
She broke in the end, too long apprenticed
to his sorcery. Her fault, of course.
Take it to the window, hold it to the light –
Is that compassion, glass, or beaten gold?
Hoarding in its mineral calm, something
of the life they had promised each other.


Paris 1987