A poem by BS Johnson
And should she die tonight,
with this three years’ difference as well between us now?
Or no, be maimed perhaps,
and bearing pain, to live
on damages for life?
In any case, I wish
her no good, whom I loved
as Brunel loved iron.
Abstracted in art
in architecture,
in scholars’ detail;
absorbed by music,
by minutiae,
by sad trivia:
all to efface her, whom I can forget
no more than breathing.
Knowledge of her was
earned like miners’ pay:
afterwards I sought
friends’ knowledge of her:
now I need to know
nothing of this girl:
she whom I once knew
as my tongue my mouth.