this book of yours that arrived today
tells me you were born in 1945
(which makes you old enough to be my father)
(which is true (because I think my father was born
around 1945) (I say ‘I think’ because I don’t
know for sure & you can take that for what it means) but
in any case I think I would have liked you) (I already like
you) (by which I mean we would have gotten
along) I like the way your line breaks (your mind
works) the way you (probably) held a glass
of milk ((or wine) (or whisky) (they’re all the same you’d
claim)) & quaff ( does anyone quaff anything these days)
that seems like an anachronism (even for a poet)
& it doesn’t even bother me when you think
about poems ( even as you write them)
pipe it into rows of S shapes & buns that he’d bake so slowly
they would remain as pale as possible & he’d split the buns in
two & stick the S & the halves of the bun into a ball of whipped
cream & spoon the ball with the pastry stuck into it onto a
sauced filled with sieved raspberry coulis & when the waiters
walked to your table with the saucer held up high & swooped
down to serve you the dessert it was revealed that the flam-
buoyancy of the waiter’s gait from the kitchen to the table would
nudge the cream across the plate so that a white swirl would
slice through the red liquid & the people would gasp because
it looked very much like a little swan swimming across a red
pond & maybe that’s when I thought about being an artist but
dad left before he could show me how to make the swan trick
work) (so I started reading instead)
(like my friend Dominic said)
genius is all about
how much
you can forgive
(I’m so
rry)
it took me
(so) long
