This bunch of keys
that fills my fist
if I could remember
which was which
might let me back
into my old lives.
This she gave me
a lifetime ago:
let yourself in,
switch off the alarm,
make yourself at home.
Which I did happily,
till she'd join me,
and we'd rejoice (key
to each other's heart)
doing what couples did.
Except the day I forgot
the code for the alarm,
panicked, slammed
the door and fled
from the loud wailing
that summoned in my absence
half the street, the police,
the security firm,
and her father
from across town.
Of course, should the key
still work, I'd find she
herself long gone, instead
some other householder in bed
or setting a guard dog on me.
These keys, should I go back,
might let me into my old job,
the office crammed with books,
filing cabinets choc-a-bloc
with yellowing scripts
for lectures given
(Wordsworth, Melville, Dickens,
poets) hither and yon
to mostly young students
who'd twitter and yawn.
Now of course that office
belongs to some young scholar
of the other gender,
brisk and tidy, unburdened
by the 'dead weight' of the canon,
qualified not in classics
but creativity and its theory;
exposing everywhere
the tiresome threesome's crass
impact: race, gender, class.
Ah well, at least the lady
of the alarmed house
now lives here with me,
and shares this other key.
That office crammed with books
is now this garage crammed with books -
piles of unmarked essays
and exam scripts? - no more.
Throw away those keys -
my castle's 'tiltadoor'
opens with this 'remote'.
Who cares how it looks?
Max Richards
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