Friday Morning (the poet again falls in love with his
wife)
In Belfast all late drinkers know the Paramour's the place to go.
At the window of bedroom fourteen, happy this morning as I've ever been with a book and a cigarette and tea I read with nothing bugging me. Over the streets and houses streams new sunlight. This is within my means and that's the pleasure, to read in peace in an ordinary unprivileged place.
Stuck for a kip last night we came to this seedy bedroom, this gilt frame round the garish landscape, 'ancient mill by murky river', after Constable. The colour scheme of walls and bed is Eau de Nile against Wino Red. Lifting the ashtray she opined, `This is the one thing well designed.'
She's gone but evidences stay: our crippled butts in that ashtray, our soiled glasses, the faint sting of her perfume. What I was just now reading was a few poems by Kathleen Raine who, I thought, was a neo-platonic pain in the arse; but no, no. I was wrong.
Plain and intense she achieves song.
Oh, not too often, she is abstract; but I have caught her in the act.
Pity and tenderness in the ntarriage bed she prays for. Embracing couples are often dead to the world. But lithe frame rode sweet shiny ass last night!
Let cleaners come for the soiled glass and ashtray. Let fresh linen and laundered towels be brought for tonight's lovers and night owls. May they rise as tender, as early, as my wife and I and descend to shiny teapot and Ulster fry.
James Simmons
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