I
Unfortunately, tired by their half-day
in Liverpool, they pretended that the book
they brought him was a present. With one look
he saw it wasn't, and he wouldn't play. 
Right on the doorstep, barring the way in,
he ripped the binding off: the navy-blue
blind-panelled covers and loose pages flew
into a flowerbed. It was ‘a sin
to treat a book, a hymn-book, so,' they said.
 
The buddleia tree still flourishes, in his head,
besides that massive door, where ‘troops of fairies
pasture their steeds', their butterflies. There lingers 
a riffle of India paper in his fingers, Poor innocent! — to bring a bunch of flowers! — 
In thanks for fetching an immortal soul
Out of its heaven to comfort their bad hours
And long, long days, the poker and the hole
Forgotten in the clean and proper ward
Where on that hot Bank Holiday the mothers
For want of midwives each massaged the others — 
To bring a bunch of flowers as her reward!
 
Lovely vitality of the universe
He thought, but on that birthday forty years
Later learned what a lover should have done — 
Sooner come empty-handed for his son — 
‘Michaelmas daisies?' — now he saw her cry —