Robert Angus
I Myself Slipped the Cable
Tomorrow I’ll depart very early in the morning.
I prefer the morning. Yesterday my illness
(my cancer) pulled up the anchor, discarded
the mooringline, & I began to drift,
absently but very painfully, out through the
early mist (already a ghost?) from my
40-year home & delectable harbour…
My doctor says continually: Maybe
this, maybe that; but he’s a wise
old so-&-so. He’s off for a brief
holiday & has left a huge dose of pills
(Be very careful, he said), without mentioning
it to my wife or to any of my children.
I’ve hidden the bottle behind one of the Bibles
& covered by the other which for weeks I’ve kept
close by my bed…
I’m as excited as a lover (or
should I say Bluebeard’s wife?) who has
the key to a door - always locked - & is
waiting till past midnight, till everything’s
quiet as the grave..
Very early in the morning
my family will enter. My wife, suddenly waking,
will say to the children, he’s deeply asleep...
the doctor says it’s essential he rests: let us
leave him in peace!
[I’ve now sailed far out to sea…
I’m anxious to call out goodbye & blow her a kiss…
I lean from my boat happily shouting my thanks to her
- how clever she is!]
[Robert Angus died (from cancer) in January 1985. We had corresponded about this group of poems in November, but he did not mention his illness. The above poem Ambit published in 1976 and is reprinted in his memory. A small collection of his poems ‘Zoo and Park’ is available £1 (post free) from Mrs. Robert Angus, The Close, Stouts Hill, Uley, Dursley, Glos.]
Page(s) 13
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