After the Ball

After the Ball

After the ball I walked away alone
beneath the multitude of gloating stars,
clutching my misery to me like a second coat,
thinking of the wreckage of the year;
and how exquisite you were, even that night;
so beautiful, wrapped in your icy correctness,
dancing arms-length with a hateful shadow.

After the ball I wandered hollow-eyed
through moon-pale fields until the sun
heaved above the tree-line and I turned back.
And when my father came, we packed the car
with books it turned out I would never use,
with sharp-edged memories it turned out
would cleave like bitter razors all my days&;#8230;

And we drove, my taciturn father and I,
past crows at their work on the highway verge,
past distant combine-harvesters stripping
the last of the wheat beneath a copper sky.
I wound the window down near Gundagai
so I could feign, should my father see,
that the slipstream brought the tears.