Night Thoughts (I)

A wall of apples towering among leaves,
The very same I left there by the lawn,
Come back and are the apples of my eye
As I lie here in bed imagining.

And who was Mr Smith? I think of him,
Sixty years back, with dark moustache and hair,
A furnace of disaster with smoked breath:
That and a seething fury were his airs.

And the Miss Jellies-yes, they wobbled too,
The name was all they needed with that flesh,
Sad and encased and withered as it was:
They passed like sailing ships and sometimes smiled.

Yet to be weak was what they all desired,
The silly, savage Mr Smith, the gentle
Miss Jellies: when he broke it was to thrash
His son and call it moral, while they giggled.
...