It was the cook who held me,
dying. Thomas loved me more
in retrospect, dipping
his pen in the well,
resurrecting Cornwall.
On his writing desk,
he kept a calendar
set to March 7th, the day
we met, a fetish
galling to Florence,
his second wife. She
must have been in shock
to split him up
like that: his ashes
taken to the Abbey
for the nation to revere,
his heart here with me
in Stinsford churchyard.
I would have vetoed
the cremation.
Each of us, wanting
so much to be first,
failed to see
Thomas loved best
no woman in the flesh
but the daughter
of his mind: my Tess.
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