Thirty years
echo round
our front room.
And what's done is
done.
No use crying
over milk that's spilt,
no use chasing
shadows which, after all,
are only the absence of light
& air
in this ransacked hall.

Witness it:
strewn papers everywhere,
I, naive, seeking out some other
glowing thing amongst
these scrawled ink letters,
half a foot high
on my mother's wall.