Come see my love

This new house of ours

See the wonderful lawn

And, um, the broad verandah?

Come inside my love

See the spacious rooms

And the smooth enamelled walls?

This our bedroom?

And this the living room?

See the sofas how comfy they already look?

My smile was fast fading

For she showed no great pleasure …

Um, the neighbours?

They are wonderful too

See my love this shiny kitchen

It has everything you might need …

At last a reaction

Me? Or the cook?

Who’ll be pleased?

By the way who’s this cook

Someone I know?

Yaagh the cook?

I blankly looked

Yes yes of course

I’ll get you a cook

Anything my love for you

Hmmph she flounced

I’ll see the rest later

I’m going home

My budgie hasn’t seen me

Since this morning

Poor thing she needs her seeds

And off she went

I glumly locked up

And plonked the keys

Into the caretaker’s hands

And in my best Terminator voice said

I’ll be back

Hmmph he sneered

I went back in haste

To my old study

And scrounged up my battered copy

Of Whitman, my agony aunt

It opened as always

To The Passage to India

"Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,
The Past! the Past! the Past!
The Past—the dark unfathom'd retrospect!"

Hmmph the past

Great

But what about the future?

My soul asked

The prospect is equally dark and unfathom'd