Robert Lowell 1917-77

Father's Bedroom

In my Father's bedroom
blue threads as thin
as pen-writing on the bedspread
blue dots on the curtains
a blue kimono
Chinese sandals with blue plush straps
The broad-planked floor
had a sandpapered neatness
The clear glass bed-lamp
with a white doily shade
inches by resting on volume two
was still raised a few
of Lafcadio Hearn's
Glimpses of unfamiliar Japan
Its warped olive cover
was punished like a rhinoceros hide
In the flyleaf
'Robbie from Mother.'
Years later in the same hand
'This book has had hard usage
On the Yangtze River, China
It was left under an open
porthole in a storm.'