He smoked a cherry-wood pipe, knew all about cannas, And deplored our lack of a genuine fast bowler. My uncle called his wife Soft Hands. Once in 1936 he sat in his Holland Hall drawing-room Reading Ulysses when a student walked in. Years later I read him an essay on D.H. Lawrence And the Imagists; he listened, Then spoke of Lord Clive, the travels of Charles M. Doughty, "My dear young fellow . . . " I followed the truck on my bicycle And left early; his friends sat all afternoon In the portico of a nearby house.