The winged years

Oxford

Oddbins, which I think opened when we were first married

    is packed. A pub we met for lunch in, the day

Dylan released Street-Legal, has changed name: town not gown,

    So I go to another and sit an hour with 

ghosts and a pint. Recalling happiness a thwart thing

    killed hurts me worse than thoughts of the misery

we came to. Sites of memory. The winged years. If this

    is doing work on myself, I don't know, but when

I pass a shop and remember a dress, suddenly,

    after everything, there are tears on my cheek.

 

~ Lachlan MacKinnon, reprinted in Essential Poems for the Way We Live Now, edited by Daisy Goodwin (London, 2003) 

"A pint In the Jericho" by Neil. Moralee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0