View & Port Meadow

It had a view, the room I was condemned and lucky to inhabit for two weeks. I’d move closer, as my white cell count climbed, to the window, read my Milton – no idea why I brought him (certainly bemused the nurses) -– and stare with a tired longing at the sky.

Vallombrosa, its fallen leaves a truth too much for me, recalled our honeymoon visit, the fictive sadnesses of distant youth no longer bearable as I turned to watch a car circle a roundabout and come back down the road it had seemed to leave behind.

And yet, though sometimes uninspired, the view was still a view, spoke of a realm elsewhere in which light and sky might conjure a new series of manifestations, healing spaces, a glimpse of chance escape from illness, even a made-up Eden thronged by angels’ faces.