Ground in the Victorian lock, stiff, With difficulty screwed open, To admit me to the seven mossed stairs And the badly kept garden. Who runs to me in memory Through flowers destroyed by no love But the child with brown hair and eyes, Smudged all over with toffee? I lick his cheeks. I bounce him in air. Two bounces, he disappears. Fifteen years later, he redescends, Not as a postponed child, but a letter Asking me for his father who now possesses No garden, no home, not even any key.