The New Life

Easter Sunday is the day I associate with you,
because that day I shambled through Battersea,
a man trapped fast between a fast-moving new
love and an old, and few men have a gait flat as he:
and that was me (the Albert Bridge frostily twinkling)
entering Chelsea, the previous unprofitable year
manacling me by the ankles. But an inkling
of better luck. And in a shadow the shop of a chocolatier

ablaze with light and luscious caramel and rose-
coloured wrapping and ribbon, and I walked in:
alone, as though on a vast steppe (plus I suppose
the artisan himself). And then I balked: in
a splendid cabinet rested an array of eggs,
dense and dark and sparkling, and muralled round
with incantations long and lovely as your legs,
and more intricately patterned and profound

than the river I’d just traversed.
I spent about a hundred quid, I think (it felt
like more at the time). As I left the shop a burst
of cold wind hit me and sunlight fell full-pelt
and I knew I was right to give up my old existence.
I walked back to your flat on Cambridge Rd.,
it was two, ten, a hundred miles, it was any distance,
it was SW11, it was Narnia, it was any postal code.

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