Events and sudden absences

Being inhabitants of older vintage,
we pass on by, for the most part,
and rarely meet. Any conversation
is likely to be short, could be the first
for years and rich as a result, even if
we do not know each other’s names.

Houses here were built an age ago.
They seem to be identical. We know
the shape of rooms, guess the way
they’re used, but cannot comprehend
their ambience or if recent occupants
made major changes to the layout.

Actual neighbours have a clearer view.
They know doors that close will open,
how each departure precedes a new
arrival. They may try to find out how
a person travelled to this place, what
that journey meant, if it was difficult.

Up the street, residents with less tenure
are more sensitive than we might think.
Passing through quite swiftly, events
and sudden absences still affect them—
a window remaining dark for months
where silence plays instead of music.

---

The children are here to see you

If special preparations needed to be made,
then I was not aware. Why should I be?
The kitchen light was on at the usual time.
Their cat was summoned for breakfast
as normal but, when the back door opened,
a clutch of adult voices could be heard
exchanging information quite decisively.

The children are here, I heard the carer say
a little later. The children are here to see you.
My neighbour’s children are in their forties.
Sometimes, they bring their children too.
Small bodies, usefully occupied in a garden,
must wait by the French doors for Granny
to bless them with her fluctuating presence.

My neighbour’s sixty years of grown-up life
were filled with leadership and instruction
as a teacher, and the same, it seems, as wife
and mother. Some gestures, a few moments
of relative coherence, are all I will see today
across the fence—a child with her children,
for whom the game continues to be played.

This is the third poem from Oliver’s My neighbour’s carer sequence to appear in Wild Court, after ‘An evening stroll’ and ‘Gardening’.