[Sundae]

Father in the Railway Buffet

What are you doing here, ghost, among these urns,
These film-wrapped sandwiches and help-yourself biscuits,
Upright and grand, with your stick, hat and gloves,
Your breath of eau-de-cologne?

What have you to say to these head-scarfed tea-ladies,
For whom your expensive vowels are as exotic as Japan?
Stay, ghost, in your proper haunts, the clubland smokerooms,
Where you know the waiters by name.

You have no place among these damp and nameless.
Why do you walk here? I came to say goodbye.
You were ashamed of me for being different.
It didn't matter.

You who never even learned to queue.

U A Fanthorpe.

(my favourite poems of hers always hurt my throat. this even more than most)