Sheila Fell
(On hearing of the death Of Cumbrian painter – Sheila Fell)
I remember you, Sheila Fell,
I remember your small Belsize Park
Bedsit; stinking of oils –
Your cats dinner stinking too –
And your black cat as thin as you!
I remember your lover Irish Clifford –
And all of us standing in no.38
Glenlock Road’s hall, talking –
I remember lying next to Alan,
As we in silence listened to music
On the ‘third’, we artists of youth.
I remember how you couldn’t kill
A moth, even if it ate thro’ the
Few clothes you had –
And how you wanted my ‘gift’
And I ‘yours
Used to be poet and I to paint –
Now you are dead; could we
Exchange that gift too – I would
Enter into your enchantment
And you take my poverty –
The stranger to you –
I remember your gazelle –
Brown-eyes and tonight
At your demise
My hazel-eyes
Weep.
Sheila Fell is dead –
And I, who still survive,
Hear somewhere in my head
The ghost-voices of thirty years ago –
Calling, clear and sweet
As poet to painter
Gives a tear.