Alive
It was all done for you.
I really should have died
last summer when I was on 95% oxygen
with two collapsed lungs
and the doctors and nurses shaking their heads
after catching MRSA at my operation.
Now I haven't the nerve to send you
the copies of my new books
after the way you played up over
those email messages back in '96.
The whole business hardly seems worth the bother.
I'd have been better off dead.
I don't want to write poems
so American college students
can scrabble over my guts.
I get a reader every 15 minutes on the Internet
but they are totally anonymous to me.
`Nobody's sleep under so many eyes.'
You must think me insane to write to you
when I haven't seen you for twenty years
but it was all done for you.
Even the lies of `Hulagu's Ride.'
Put them off the scent.
I'll miss you with the horses and hounds on Boxing Day.
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