Holiday

From here it looks finished.
The splintered house where we stayed,
three miles away, five -
shutters tied back against a wind
the locals have a name for,
scraggy wildflowers in vases,
the best nature can do
in the circumstances. And you
praising everything, talking
about clarity of line and thought,

keeping your public face
but rounding on a boy of eighteen,
'We're English', in the café-tabac at
the merest suggestion, then laughing.
At home you'd go to pieces over nothing,
the kettle boiled dry, a laddered stocking:
...