The Cocoa-mug
The way that between your fingers the soap shoots In the bath, so her Spode cocoa-mug went Arcing across the kitchen, landing in The stone sink with a crash like armament.
So she stands staring down at a thousand pieces Of what she had been drinking from for years After her mother died, whose it had been. Apparently it's an occasion for tears For shocked she finds that hot stuff freely pouring In weirs over her flushing cheeks: it is All out of proportion, she knows this even As it is happening: no excuse for this While the desert creeps and the needed tears of the sky Don't fall at all and the babies die: no reason For such precipitation over a mere Mug, onset of such a rainy season.
But then she sees that the true cause she is weeping Is simply this: that she's nothing to cry about, No one she loves who can die, no one she loves Who can shout at her in the bedroom and storm out, And that is why she stands there blinded and shaking, A big grown woman of nearly forty-five
Hilary Corke
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