Sometimes Bluthorpe dreams
of lines he’d like to use at parties such as this,
for example, Descartes died of a collapsed cogito
or Beware the past bearing gifts,
but basically he finds it hard to introduce himself.

Perhaps he’s still a farmer’s boy, from the edge of town,
who’s never sure what to say. He hasn’t travelled much:
his money and his courage died
before he got to Venice. He cannot say
how best to cook an oyster or a mussel, even though
his friend the monk is fond of Provençale. He chooses wine
by what’s on special and there are nights he finds
in Poet’s Corner all the comfort of a good
metaphor. As to politics, he’d better not, he can’t believe
a good economy means never having to say
you’re sorry. He dare not talk religion, there’s an ache,
a silence waiting there that won’t keep faith
with the sacrament of sausage rolls. That leaves
only the weather, literature and sex – but can he take it,
can he really spend another night
tossed about in humid theories of erotic prose?

He’s almost relieved when Lyn Vellins says
his staff photograph is out of focus, “It’s a nice
shot but it looks as if your face is disappearing.”
He’s read, of course he has, about performance
notions of the self. But the greatest role he ever had
was Lear, nothing will come of nothing, speak again,
and then a chance that does redeem all sorrows that ever
I have felt. That was the night he got carried away
by his own acting and was about to walk over the edge of the lit stage,

Cordelia still hanging through his arms.