I held your hand. The ancient bone

beneath the flesh had been there since

the dawn of time:

you were an immemorial fact

which none could cancel. Our staunch pact

could not be broken. None could rinse

away the rhyme

and reason of that Elie beach

with everything within our reach:

the home, the kids, the rich years spent,

our maiden kiss,

and a blown hat I deftly caught.

Those numbers don’t add up to naught.

And yet I sense it wasn’t meant

to end like this.

Paul Groves, ‘The Mauve Tam-O’Shanter’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 July 2007.