A Cage To Hold My Dreams
A Face Like A Million Others
Winter is at its height
and I feel older and weaker than
the dying light on this windswept
Suffolk beach. Young women stroll
past me on the end of dog-leads,
pausing to catch their breath
But none of them glance at me.
Why should they ?
I am an anonymous beach-walker
with a face like a million others.
But one girl who doesn't see me,
or pretends she hasn't,
almost stops my heart as I watch
her walk by. With glorious black
hair and a strangely familiar mouth,
I wonder, could she be the
grandchild of a girl who stopped
my life like a permanent red light
in the long, hot summer of '59.
She won't be alive now, of course,
this lady from life's opening salvo.
I heard her die
in my sleep as if she died alongside
me, I mopped her fevered brow,
heard her gasps and frightened cries,
and then nothing. I awoke in a cold
sweat, fumbled for the bedside
light, but there was only I,
alone in a bed in Camberwell,
re-living the familiar nightmare.
She was the best I had ever known,
calm, sincere, loving, with the face
of a young Sophia Loren
and the softness of cool ice cream.
We made promises which
I couldn't keep, and she cried
because I said I wanted more
than she or the life she expected
to have with me could offer.
She was very young, and couldn't
understand that I needed time
to find out how high I could climb
or how far I would fall.
It broke my heart to leave her,
but I didn't hear then, as I do now,
flutes on the soundtrack as
I kissed her tearful face.
We never got together again.
Someone told me she moved
to Dorset and married a doctor.
The night comes in off the North Sea
and a thickening mist gives
the offshore boats something new
to think about. The sea bares
its teeth and wants to drown me
A dog runs past, spraying sand
and loose shingle with his paws.
He pays no attention to me.
Why should he ?
I am an anonymous beach-walker
with a face like a million others.
and I feel older and weaker than
the dying light on this windswept
Suffolk beach. Young women stroll
past me on the end of dog-leads,
pausing to catch their breath
But none of them glance at me.
Why should they ?
I am an anonymous beach-walker
with a face like a million others.
But one girl who doesn't see me,
or pretends she hasn't,
almost stops my heart as I watch
her walk by. With glorious black
hair and a strangely familiar mouth,
I wonder, could she be the
grandchild of a girl who stopped
my life like a permanent red light
in the long, hot summer of '59.
She won't be alive now, of course,
this lady from life's opening salvo.
I heard her die
in my sleep as if she died alongside
me, I mopped her fevered brow,
heard her gasps and frightened cries,
and then nothing. I awoke in a cold
sweat, fumbled for the bedside
light, but there was only I,
alone in a bed in Camberwell,
re-living the familiar nightmare.
She was the best I had ever known,
calm, sincere, loving, with the face
of a young Sophia Loren
and the softness of cool ice cream.
We made promises which
I couldn't keep, and she cried
because I said I wanted more
than she or the life she expected
to have with me could offer.
She was very young, and couldn't
understand that I needed time
to find out how high I could climb
or how far I would fall.
It broke my heart to leave her,
but I didn't hear then, as I do now,
flutes on the soundtrack as
I kissed her tearful face.
We never got together again.
Someone told me she moved
to Dorset and married a doctor.
The night comes in off the North Sea
and a thickening mist gives
the offshore boats something new
to think about. The sea bares
its teeth and wants to drown me
A dog runs past, spraying sand
and loose shingle with his paws.
He pays no attention to me.
Why should he ?
I am an anonymous beach-walker
with a face like a million others.
