I'll finish up with three poems in free verse again.
Next one is a poem called Slow Waker.
I wrote this about 1980.
I'd just been back to England, and seen my family.
Among them my nephew, who was 18 years old and rather awkward,
in just the same way I remember myself
as having been awkward at the age of 18.
And he came up to--
he's living in the country, but he came up
to-- it's very nice of him, to London
where I was staying to stay a few days extra with me.
And in this poem, I'm--
when I first published this poem, I called him my cousin.
I didn't want him to see it, and feel that he'd be hurt by it.
And then I thought, oh dear, what if he sees it
anyway and recognizes himself?
He'll feel even worse.
So I got my brother, his father to show it to him
and he's delighted apparently.
Any attention at the age of 18 is interesting,
if you have a poem written about you.
Also, I think it's a poem--
frequently after about the age of 30 or 40,
one sentimentalizes the young.
I can't help feeling myself thinking, oh, wouldn't it
be wonderful to be back at that age, with all that potential
ahead, with nothing decided?
That's just what you hate at that age.
You hate being potential.
You hate having nothing decided.
You want to be something definite.
Slow Waker.
I look at the nephew, 18, across the breakfast.
He had to be called and called.
He smiled, but without conviction.
He will not have tea.
Oh, OK.
If it's no trouble, he will have tea.
His adult face is brand new.
Once the newness clears up, and it
has got an expression or two besides bewilderment,
he could be a handsome devil.
He could be a carpenter, a poet.
It's all possible, impossible.
The future is not a word in his mouth.
That for him is the trouble.
He lay in bed, caught deep in the mire between sleep
and awake, neither alert nor resting.
Between the flow of night ceaselessly braiding itself,
and the gravelly beach that our soles have thickened on.
Nobody has ever told him he is good looking,
just that his feet smell.
He paces through alien London all day.
Everything is important and unimportant.
He feeds only by osmosis.
He stares at the glint and blunt thrust of traffic.
He wants to withdraw.
He wants to withdraw into a small space,
like the cupboard under the stairs where
the vacuum cleaner is kept.
So he can wait and doze, and get in nobody's way.