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Andrew Motion

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A Visit from Mick Imlah

The very morning death took you away
you sauntered back through my window
with the black cat grace and nonchalance
which marked you out in the early days.
You were thinking maybe of a quick drink

at the Marlborough Arms: was I coming?
I was already there, thirty-five years gone
in a twinkling, but quick was not the word.
Six pints in, when it was no longer clear
whether our real subject was exactly how

London Scottish would catch Harlequins,
or whether Tennyson in fact might not be
Tennysonian at all, according to James,
or what the landlady might do after hours
when no one was looking but her husband,

I understood there was life, and within life
there were games, which mattered because
they did not matter. It was your gift, Mick,
to know that from the start, and to keep faith
with the difficult but clever course it gave you.

To judge by the way your ghost then led me
round to my study and the present tense again,
with you still wearing the same brown brogues
and blue jeans, the same too-thick tweed jacket
and not breaking a sweat, nothing has changed.

I told you I was very glad of that. You lifted up
your head without saying good-bye, then stepped
over the threshold and strolled off with your hands
in your pockets, taking a view of the bald street,
the blank day, and black traffic grinding through.

Page(s) 69

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