Looking – what was I looking for?
I opened the door.
There was the bed; there was the clock;
Now stilled, the tick-tock
Alarm on its spring-hasty way
Pursuing the day.
There’s no cheerless couple to rise,
Sleep in their eyes,
Sitting with backs to each other:
My Father and Mother.
The bed hurts. He sleeps in a chair,
As if less lonely there,
The big foolish dog at his feet.
The room is now neat
And un-lived-in; here, blurring with dust,
Things lie where they must.
She has gone; it is simplest to say
He drove her away,
For now she is happier free
Than when married, and he
Shuffles in twilight, grinding small
The cause of it all.
In their room, by the empty bed,
I stood, newly wed;
And I forgot what I went in for.
I left. Closed the door.