Here's To You, Mr Robinson

At last, Mark became himself:
the sloped dough of his jowls,
the low, glottal growl and
a general submission to gravity;
a reluctant going down.

He became the man
I always knew
stood trapped inside –
sixty years clad in the costume of a kid,
lumbered with limbs that moved too quick,
a boy’s brain that sprang tree-frog spry
from fact to fact to dry, apt witticism,
too plump with zest and zeal
to bide a while,
to feel the wet bark beneath its toes,
the thump of its heart in its chest.

As some have greatness thrust upon them
so age forced
a form of gravitas upon his sermons –
that rat-a-tat delivery slowed
to the resonant crump of ordnance,
his words now measured,
his hesitations
pregnant.

And sure,
there’s inspiration in
the long burn,
the constant beacon –
while seasons turned
he lit the pulpit’s lantern
steadfast as a star
but with none of the heat.
Sure, he smouldered like a bomb fuse
but I longed for him to blaze.

They say light’s the best disinfectant;
come, pitchfork-bearers, turn your dripping torches
on the poison toad of our love,
smoke it, fat and foul, from its smutted cove
and face, at last, this pipsqueak abomination:

a relationship
that, in thirty-four years
saw a single row.

I started it,
of course.
Came at the subject quite obliquely,
I thought,
but veiled thorns still snag.
He tried parrying with platitudes, weak gags;
soon we were locking horns like stags.
Doesn’t it nag at you, I said,
carrying this secret like some shameful brand,
like some grim criminal tattoo.
Shame made a liar out of you.
You’re ashamed of me, too.
And he staggered,
as if feeling the full pull of the globe:
no, no.
I said, I know it’s true.
He hung his head.
We were eating Thai that night.
I flung my plate into the fireplace.
and fled.

And came back,
of course.
It was winter.
I got cold.

You know, I was told
that God sees every sparrow fall
well, maybe that’s true,
but Mark had been down on hands and knees
to pick up every lump of chicken,
every last cashew;
he’d swept shards of china from the grate;
cleared the table;
washed his plate.
This gutless man,
this liar.
I loved him then, my liar,
loved him more than ever;
slow, old arms closing round my back,
pink sparks crackling in the fire.