It was late September, I'd just poured a glass of wine,
begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked.  The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed its steamy
breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other's glass like a 
brow.
He was standing under the pear-tree snapping a twig.

Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the
way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the
sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold.  And then he 
plucked 
a pear from the branch, we grew Fondante d'Automne,
and it sat in his hand like a light-bulb.  On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights on that
tree?

He came into the house.  The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds.  You know the mind; I thought of
the field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain; I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to 
laugh.

I served up the meal.  For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the
knives, the forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,
 a fragrant, bone dry white from Italy, then watched 
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.

It was then that i started to scream.  He sank to his
knees.
After we'd both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out.  I made him sit
on the other side of the room, and keep his hands to
himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar.  I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn't mind. I couldn't believe my ears:
how he'd had a wish. Look, we all have wishes;
But who has wishes granted? Him.  Do you know about 
gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnished; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced, 
as the blue flame played on it's luteous stem.  At least
I said, 'you'll be able to give up smoking for good'.

Separate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room 
into the tomb of Tutankhamen. You see, we were
passionate then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,
like presents, fast food.  But now I feared his honeyed
embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.

And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night I dreamt I bore 
his child, it's perfect ore limbs, it's little tongue
like a precious latch, it's amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies.  My dream-milk
burned in my breasts.  I woke up to the streaming sun.

So he had to move out.  We'd a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of it's own. I drove him up
under the cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the woman who'd married the 
fool
who'd wished for gold.  At first I visited, odd times.
parking the car a good way off, then walking.

You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass.  One day a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,
glistening next to the rivers path.  He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold 
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead.  I miss
most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.