Poetry

London

 

1

I light a candle for her mother

in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square

five hundred miles from home

do I do wrong by widening this loss

what comfort is there after all

in my stopping without telling her

to light a candle without praying?

what comfort here for her in untold light?

 

2

the hotel room is a maze of shopping bags

and I am phoning home

they tell me you have run away

that the police are searching

and your name is on the radio

I wonder where you are: a car somewhere in Donegal

he has pulled over and it is raining

the trunk weighed down with your black bag full of clothes

and do you know her mother has died

and are you scared and when will you come home

 

3

I win twenty pounds on a scratchcard

in Marble Arch station. I spend it in Sainsbury’s

on hot croissants, on plums and nectarines

a box of cereal, a pint of ice-cold milk

a copy of the Times. No one is as lucky

or as guilty. I have never earned the right to be unhappy.