Like a bird's flight, a life

Very busy at work, so another poem today ...

... this one is by Charles Tomlinson, taken from the pictured 1992 collection:


The Improvement

The hallway once
Ran straight through the house, and you could see
Entrance to exit in one sweep
Of the eye across a cobbled floor -
Unexplored, the territory of rooms
To either side. One day
It was resolved to block that shaft
With a vestibule, and to curb its tendency
With a further jut of wall half way.
Do I like the changes? A ghost
Could not pass straight through
Without confusion now. What ghost, you say?
The ghost that is my memory which quickens still
At the thought of the long passage lit
From door to door, the clean
Flight of the senses through it, like a wife
Running to meet her man, like a bird's flight, a life.

---

Charles Tomlinson (1927 - )