A transliteration of W H Auden’s poem Dear, though the night is gone.
Seven Oaks
Tuesday 13 November
Dear John,
When I left so suddenly yesterday you must have thought that I had felt your rejection too keenly, that the shock of your revelation was such that I had to get away. In truth, I had known that it would come. Strange as it may seem, I had dreamed it and so, when the reality unfolded I was able to accept it and leave with some semblance of dignity. When I say that I dreamed it I do not imply that I had some glimpse, some flash vision of the future, of our meeting in the modern surroundings of the Euro Terminal at St Pancras. No, my vision of the future was rooted in the past; in a past that I could not myself experience but have seen in films and read in fiction.
We were together, you and I, John, in a cavernous space that seemed like a railway terminal at the time of World War 2. It cannot have been such for there were no platforms and no rails, no steam nor noise, nor clatter and rattle of departure or arrival. The roof above us curved away into darkness, dusty steel and grimy glass. All around were camp beds set out in serried ranks with grey blankets strewn across them, rumpled as people had left them. No bed was unoccupied for long. Dark shapes came and went, some singly, some in pairs, all uniformly dark as if all colour had been leeched from them into the eternal shadows of that lofty hall.
We were in a bed in the far corner as if to avoid the glance of those others who moved through that thoroughfare. We were apart from them as we have always been, holding aloof from them as they from us. In this sepulchral hall from the past we were even more removed for in that time our love, not understood, could not be countenanced. We were unaware of time as we spoke in undertones. We were outside of time, it swirled around us but did not touch as our lips touched, as we touched beneath those rough grey blankets, indifferent to those who lay in beds around us in arms that were not like our arms. They clung to each other for comfort and from fear of the world beyond. We, beyond their world, held each other, I thought, in defiance of that world.
It was then, in that place, that you told me you loved her; that Jennifer had stolen what I thought was mine forever. You sloughed me off like an unwanted skin, a discarded cocoon. You emerged as a different creature, one that I could no longer comprehend. I felt unwanted, unable to fight for what I could no longer understand. I left.
It was then, that I awoke to ponder this dream and draw from it what meaning I could. Was it just my own insecurity that caused me to dream of the possibility that you could leave me for another, and such another? My life has been full of uncertainties, but I was more sure of your love than of anything. The darkness of that dream, the gloom, the forbidding and foreboding, how strange it was.
After that dream, the bright, sunny reality of St Pancras and the new terminal was such a contrast, but I knew when that look came over your face, that unabashed look that I could not have seen in the darkness of the dream, though now I believe it had been there. I knew before you spoke a word. I knew that my dream presaged what I now faced.
You were surprised that I did not go to pieces, swear undying love, scream my need, batter you with recrimination. I had done all that in the time between the revelation of my dream a week ago and your declaration yesterday. To be honest, I was relieved that the waiting was over.
I will not say I wish you happiness, I can't, in all honesty do that, but neither will I curse you to some unimaginable hell. I write because I felt I had to. Now I will go back to working every hour I can muster to forget what we had and what I have lost.
With love still,
Pat
