1. ‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed
2. The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
3. They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
4, Fall to within five inches of the sill,
5, Whose window shows a strip of building land,
6. Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took
7. My bit of garden properly in hand.’
8. Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook
9. Behind the door, no room for books or bags —
10. ‘I’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie
11. Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
12. On the same saucer-souvenir, and try
13. Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
14. The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
15. I know his habits — what time he came down,
16. His preference for sauce to gravy, why
17. He kept on plugging at the four aways —
18. Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
19. Who put him up for summer holidays,
20. And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke.
21. But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
22. Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
23. Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
24. And shivered, without shaking off the dread
25. That how we live measures our own nature,
26. And at his age having no more to show
27. Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
28. He warranted no better, I don’t know.
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