WEATHERING

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young for ever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty, nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy men who need to be seen with passable women. But now that I am in love with a place which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,

happy is how I look, and that’s all.

My hair will turn grey in any case, my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken, and the years work all their usual changes. If my face is to be weather-beaten as well

that’s little enough lost, a fair bargain for a year among lakes and fells, when simply to look out of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what my soul may wear over its new complexion.

‘Poems 1960–2000’ by Fleur Adcock (£14.99, Bloodaxe Books) is out now.