Susan Castillo Street is Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita, King’s College London. She has published four collections of poems, The Candlewoman's Trade, (2003), Abiding Chemistry, (2015), The Gun-Runner’s Daughter, (2018) and Cloak (2020), as well as several scholarly books. She lived in Portugal for 25 years, and is now based in London and in the Sussex countryside.

Uninvited Guest

We sit around a table.
All of us are getting on.
One’s wheezy.  Two have cells gone rogue.
A fourth is under pressure.

There’s an uninvited guest.
We try hard to pretend
he isn’t there.  He peers through cracks
in conversation, smells of earth,
lurks  in dark corners.

He tugs insistent at our sleeves.
Rude, really.  Not our sort at all,
 this boring party crasher.
We do our best to silence him,

fend him off with champagne flutes,
sparkling conversation. We talk
of future plans, foreign holidays.

Let’s face the music and dance.

Imperfect Mending

You bring me your green jumper.
Between the shoulder blades.
the moths have left a stab scar.

I fish for dark green thread.
There’s not an exact match
but one that’s near enough.

I thread the needle, bind the edges up
as best I can. The join will show.
I’m not a perfect seamstress.

Beauty lies in how our gaps  
are stitched together.
I hope it keeps you warm.