Some people fall into a sly black hole.
I surf the net, find young good-looking men
I knew years back, now bald and gross, and some
others there were, I cannot find at all.

Twenty years I knew him,
never said a word
in all our many meetings
his wife could not have heard.

Talked about the weather
(the English never change),
work,…

So here I am, walking through the Boboli Gardens
decorously with my children, who aren’t his,
who run in late spring sunlight, so much warmer
than in England. They make me look…

I am wiped out. They do not speak my name.
She has it all now – children, goods, the lot.
No contest; I am dead and have no claim.

She walks in – the surroundings are the…

Slowly, he came round.
He knew this was the Intensive Care Unit, but he’d been dreaming
of sixty years back, walking Yarmouth sands with his father,

who’d told him about…

One fell off the fragile bridge;

others froze in horror.

Far below them, howling winds

and glimpse of foaming water.

Four young women shared a house,

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, 1887-1943

‘Since you will almost certainly survive,

I ask you to remember that my name

is Vavilov, Academician. …