She still walks beside me
Tall, stooped, a quintessentially English presence.
 I listen again to how those flat Fenland vowels 
Swirled into melodies melded with the staccato RP of Cambridge.
We knew so many minor key explorations of sadness; 
Pulling at the scabs of loneliness and regret.
Yet you beget songs made plangent
By the melancholic timbre of your voice.
Your abiding mood was irresolution,
You never lost that fragility of heart
Our emptiness of soul was filled, never apart,
The gentle, observational rhythms of your paintings,
As we, later,  drifted apart as young people do,
Poems that would very soon break my heart
And that’s my mea cula, mea maxima culpa. 
I cannot listen to.achingly beautiful music
Without admittng to myself, yet again,
My loss, your gain, nothing lost, nothing gained. .