Rooms

Seventy draws near. My days are busy
But waking in the dawn I find myself
Alone now in the house of memory,
Trying the handles of familiar doors
That will no longer open.

Look, here is the room of my young strength,
That smelt of summer grass, whose windows opened
On moonlit lanes, on woodland paths at sunset,
When I thought the fire of my body everlasting
As water, earth and air.

And in this room my infant children slept.
I listen at the door: no quiet breathing
To reassure me now; within these walls
Lie only book and bear and doll, bewildered
By long abandonment.

And this is poetry’s room, that held a light
Like April, curtainless, with leaf and blossom
Astir beyond the glass. Here too I listen
As for an answer: where and how and why
Did I lose this one’s key?

Then morning comes; the ghostly house dissolves
And you are there, our long companionship
Not ended yet and now, just for a moment,
Not taken quite for granted, here in this
Last unlocked room of love.