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.