Polly Walshe

As soon as you stop and rest you see more hills ahead, Great chains of hills to some improbable horizon. Will it always be like this? you ask yourself. Don’t let the hills tower over you, Don’t let their shadows creep before mid-afternoon And when they come, savour the blue. Enjoy the flatness of the land you’re on, lend it your weight And don’t look up too high; Ideally don’t lift your head at all, look straight. Remember, you are not being cowardly or slack, You have worked and now deserve to rest. Just think: no hills, no flat, Or, if you prefer, regard them as clouds, those hills, Great bubbling folds of gentle gas. Leave it at that.

The imagined day includes sunshine and shopping And people saying Yes and being on my side. There’ll also be traffic and occasional drizzle So I know I haven’t died.

If you were still alive You would be ninety-six tomorrow. I think of you most days. Just now, for example, I heard you Defending the word ‘folk’ When, sometime in the Eighties, I said it was twee. Another day, I see you doing the weeding At my sister’s wedding And another day still You’re at church Hunched over a book With your fingers in your ears During the sermon. Often I hear you sneezing. When you lay in your coffin Your face was as darkly speckled as an old deed  — I think of that, too. My brain breaks you up like this But really now you are all together And not far away.

Have you looked across the Sound? On the other shore life lies. Can you see it over there? The palaces, the esplanade? It only takes a little while to cross, A year or two at most, sometimes just days. In clear weather you’ll see boats leaving the marina, The scarlet awnings of the shops And fortune-tellers on the steps; At night there are restaurant lights And houses glimmering on nameless slopes. Over there are parties you’ll attend, The masques and tattered carnivals And all the long white hours of getting wise. You’ll talk about returning here – You’ll say it’s where your heart is – But, knowing the tides, we won’t expect you.

It came at last, the letting-go, Up over the hill and down our street — The end of time had, finally, been reached. There was comfort in it, the worst happening And it being of no consequence, since we were done for. What did it matter if our digital photo frames were lost, Our data-carrying devices? There was to be no cost Since we were going under. Two strange things: the dead were not truly dead — When our backs were turned they danced among the trees — And the tide kept battering the beach. ‘This is it,’ you said As waters took the Co-op, ‘Drop everything. Why not get started? The dead play a full part in it.