A Winter Convalescence by Dannie Abse

The coast shrugs, when the camera clicks,

deliberately. The cliffs blur,

and the sun’s mashed in the west.

.

It’s sac broken, its egg-mess sticks

on the winter sea, smears it.

The air develops ghosts of soot

that become more evident, minute by minute.

They’re clever. They have no shape.

Things hum.

.

Very few oblongs blaze

in the Grand Hotel.

God, how the promenade’s empty.

The pier’s empty too

but for the figure at the far end, shadowy,

hunched with a bending rod.

That one no taller than a thumb.

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It’s strange the way people go smaller

the further they are away. Most of the time

you even forget who died.

But supposing things did not get smaller?

Best to go inside. Best to push

revolving doors to where it’s warmer,

where only a carpet makes you dizzy.

.

Inside, things hum.

Inside the insides the corridors wait.

A door opens, a hand comes out,

It’s cut off at the elbow,

it holds a pair of shoes

cut off at the ankles.

.

Walk faster. God, someone is breathing,

walk faster. Humankind

cannot bear very much unreality.

.

That’s right – lock this door, you clumsy…

Yet things still hum, things still hum.

Who blinks?

Who spies with his little eye

what no-one else has spied?

Best to pull the curtains on the night,

but then certain objects focus near:

the wardrobe with its narrow door,

the bible by the bedside.

.

Lie down, easy; lie down.

Who masturbated here?

Who whipped the ceiling? Cracked them?

Things hum.

Two blue, astringent eyes drag down their lids.

The dark comes from the lift-shaft.

.

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By Dannie Abse

from A Small Desperation (1968)

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Fun for readers: Which Grand Hotel is Abse speaking of in the poem? Answers in the comments.

The Uninvited by Dannie Abse

They came into our lives unasked for.

There was light momentarily, a flicker of wings,

a dance, a voice, and then they went out

again, like a light, leaving us not so much

in darkness, but in a different place

and alone as never before.

.

So we have been changed

and our vision no longer what it was,

and our hopes no longer what they were;

so a piece of us has gone out with them also,

a cold dream subtracted without malice,

.

the weight of another world added also,

and we did not ask, we did not ask ever

for those who stood smiling

and with flowers before the open door.

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We did not beckon them in, they came in uninvited,

the sunset pouring from their shoulders,

so they walked through us as they would through water,

and we are here, in a different place,

changed and incredibly alone,

and we did not know, we do not know ever.

.

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by Dannie Abse

from Early Poems