To rearrange
Or reassemble
Isn’t quite the same
As starting over
You know
When you buy something new
Which in the shop
Appeared to be the very thing
To set you up
Instead
To make do and mend
Even to mend
That which is not yet broken
As a sort of way
Of making the point
That to have something new is your desire
For almost all
But not all
Situations
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Tidying is begun
Two chairs and a desk
Offered to Freely Given
Two chairs (IKEA)
Brought from the house
To begin a new life
Cobwebs and dust
Removed
From walls and ceilings
Diamonds and Rust
Played
On the iPod stereo
The concrete floor
Once more is visible
As is the easel and stepladder
How difficult change is
Simply to rearrange
Is one heck of a toil
How hard
To wash away those past years
To open afresh for new memories
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There is a good deal
Of tidying to be done
Trouble is
As is often the case
Where to begin
How to make a plan
When no plan
Seems to be forthcoming
Where goes the dynamism
From those previous summers
You know
With exhibitions
Of paintings and sculptures
Using driftwood
For decoration
So much since has entered
Which now must be
Put out to pasture
Or taken to refuse
One wonders
How do they do this
In New York apartments
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But I am pretty sure
He would have smoked Woodbines
Or Park Drive, on his allotment
Beside the Humber Estuary
Those flats or smooth slopes
Contoured by the tide
Giving a certainty more even
Than the drag-in, followed by
The puff-out, of cigarette smoke
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