Baby-sitting

Gillian Clarke

I am sitting in a strange room listening

For the wrong baby. I don't love

This baby. She is sleeping a snuffly

Roseate, bubbling sleep; she is fair;

She is a perfectly acceptable child.

I am afraid of her. If she wakes

She will hate me. She will shout

Her hot midnight rage, her nose

Will stream disgustingly and the perfume

Of her breath will fail to enchant me.

To her I will represent absolute

Abandonment. For her it will be worse

Than for the lover cold in lonely

Sheets; worse than for the woman who waits

A moment to collect her dignity

Beside the bleached bone in the terminal ward.

As she rises sobbing from the monstrous land

Stretching for milk-familiar comforting,

She will find me and between us two

It will not come. It will not come.