Poem by Mary Hobson

For Neil. 11 February, 2011

I thought the man I loved had died.
We’d married, not three years before,
in nineteen-fifty-four.
Then headaches, pain,
the abscess on the brain.
I count the cost,
discover what he’s lost,
and take this stranger home with me.
But just a few
short months before his death,
quite suddenly
he was the man I knew again.
He let our children see
the man I loved, the man they never knew.
While I sat by his side
and nurses hovered anxiously above him,
with his last breath
he let the children love him.

1. The pain’s the same size as the love
2. Waterloo Station
3. The Counsellors
4. Laundry Blues
5. Snow in Zaraisk

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