17 SEPTEMBER 1994, Page 40

Throes

Being with her now is a kind of boredom, A dullness in which guilt and pain both ache, When all my childish anguish after freedom Has long since vanished. Now I wait to take Her back to her own loneliness, where she Can follow boredom of a different kind, Routine quite unresented, and set free From all required constraints. She is resigned, Stoic and still, to what is left to come: First blindness, then a sequence no one knows Choked lungs, paralysis, delirium?

Each one may follow where the other goes.

We act out cheerfulness to one another, Exchanging memories, recalling names: Son in his sixties, ninety-year-old mother, Playing our boring, life-sustaining games.

Anthony Thwaite