Her Last Night at Home
Her last night at home
she phoned, out of breath.
I was still half asleep
when she said, "There's a bird,
or a bat, loose in the house.
Please can you come home now?"
From outside I could see
the light in every window.
She met me at the door.
"It's behind the curtain
in the dining room, I think.
Something flew down the stairs."
She handed me a tennis racket,
and sat exhausted, thin, pale.
I looked everywhere: the cellar,
upstairs, in every window.
Nothing was behind the curtain
except the night, black,
full of morphine, and her house
flooded with all its lights,
reflecting back in the glass,
rooms unfolding one after another:
a long corridor to an empty kitchen.