Mr. Bleaney

‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed / The whole time he was at the Bodies, till / They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, / Fall to within five inches of the sill, // Whose window shows a strip of building land, / Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took / My bit of garden properly in hand.’ / Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook // Behind the door, no room for books or bags — / ‘I’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie / Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags / On the same saucer-souvenir, and try // Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown / The jabbering set he egged her on to buy. / I know his habits — what time he came down, / His preference for sauce to gravy, why // He kept on plugging at the four aways — / Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk / Who put him up for summer holidays, / And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke. // But if he stood and watched the frigid wind / Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed / Telling himself that this was home, and grinned, / And shivered, without shaking off the dread // That how we live measures our own nature, / And at his age having no more to show / Than one hired box should make him pretty sure / He warranted no better, I don’t know.