Nowadays it always rains in Bristol,

and every night, trying to get to sleep,

I hear it, looking beyond to the lights

winking over the Clifden Bridge, like the lights

of the shoreline seen from the Irish mailboat.

It helps me to drop off if I go over

details from childhood, like the big key

of acrid cast-iron that shut and opened

the front door. I find it strange to still remember

that it opened clockwise, and locked the way

you'd expect that it would open. Most often

I think back to a December night

when my small sister crept into bed with me,

shivering. We listened to our father's voice,

emphatic and quiet:" if the cow does die tonight,

we'll have to sell up and go." We prayed ourselves

to sleep. In the morning the wind woke us

and we all went out together to the stall.

The cow was standing up, eating hay.

And then for the first and only time I saw

my parents embracing. I hate that country:

its poverties and embarrassments

too humbling to retell. I'll never ever

go back to offer it forgiveness.

When my father died at last, the place

was empty. I went back to bury him,

then turned the key in the lock and dropped it

in the estate-agent's letterbox

and turned my back for ever on it all.