The Sofa

Your letter stayed unopen on my table
For several days. If you were friend enough
To believe me, I was about to start writing
At any moment; my mind was savagely made up
Like a serious sofa moved
Under a north window. My heart, alas

Is not the calmest of places.
Still it is not my heart that needs replacing:
And my books seem real enough to me,
My disasters, my surrenders, all my loss...
Since I was child enough to forget
That you loathe poetry, you ask for some-
About nature, greenery, insects, and, of course,
The sun- surely that would be to open
An already open window? To celebrate
The impudence of flowers? If I could

Interest you instead in his large, gentle stares,
How his soft shirt is the inside of pleasure
To me, why I must wear white for him,
Imagine he no longer trembles
When I approach, no longer buys me
Flowers for my name day...But I spread
On like a house, I begin to scatter
To a tiny to-and-fro at odds
With the wear on my threshold. Somewhere
A curtain rising wonders where I am,
My books sleep, pretending to forget me.

(Medbh McGuckian)