Through Binoculars
Between forgetting one hypochondria And registering the next, there comes An interval of an hour or two called Health, When the world leaps into clarity and enter A yacht, for example, over from left to right, Red sails in the sunshine, and down there a family With eight bright globes shaken out of a portable rack For a game of boule on the beach, or I veer across To a distant, bearded man of sixty plus Who gets a nymphet, honestly, nuzzling his forearm — And no relation! (He will not curse if the wind Sweeps his windbreak down.) In other words, Short of censoriousness or pure despair, There comes a sunnier spell called Tolerance, When I share, on this luminous oval afternoon, The painter's way with a single shaft of light On details which have shaken out themselves Into patterns I might even see as Hope. Now he stands, only a nose's length away, The solicitor, dumping a week-end anorak To race his green ball to the water's edge, So his labrador, pacing him, has no need To taste the sting of salt retrieving it. I feel virtually happy enough to speak.
Alan Brownjohn
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