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We’d sing old ‘thirties numbers at the sink:
Songs of Cole Porter, and Berlin and Kern,
Snippets from music-hall as well – a link
With her own mother – and I’d want to learn

How life was then, before the world grew fraught,
And courtesy and well-refined romance
Were still in vogue, and dinner-dances brought
Out to the floor the young and old to dance.

Sometimes we’d hum the “classics” of two reigns,
Or concert-party snippets half-recalled,
And then her eyes would brighten, with the pains
Between–years for an instant staunched and stalled.

Dearest of all! How beautiful you were.
I think I may have thrust you from my brain,
Till some ephemeral tune invades my ear
And we are singing at the sink again.

Once more I scan the long-spent rights and wrongs,
The old clunch-wall, the trees, the played-out years,
That happiness, that sadness, those cheap songs
Out-singing all the music of the Spheres.

© Colin Bailey, June 2009