After we have been married for a thousand years,
and Blackpool Tower is a crumple of yellow rust,
the children migrated to a different culture
and names and surnames are fused and changed;
after that time, when our toothbrushes are bare as spoons,
the mirror in the bathroom too forgetful to reflect,
the cup-lips we drink from worn like steps,
plates polished thin as ice and the carpets dust;
when the cat, which is black, is turned pure white,
its claws stretched long as the wildest thorns,
and the bed is grown Viking with webs and impressions;
after this time, when the climate has changed,
so tramlines are grassed and flowered like ley lines
and the last optical cables are become black as bindweed;
after this, when the stairs have evened to a hill,
the eaves come alive again, woken as a canopy of leaves
and long dead bulbs are thick with dust as the moon;
if then I should meet you advancing in the hallway,
so we are side by side, two ghosts fragile as snow,
unwilling even to touch lest we crumble and blow,
or speak, fearful of the feel of Sanscrit in our throats;
when we stand there inclined as protected columns,
transparent to the sun's antique fingerings,
and all the shadows stretch out long and slow,
do you think by then the endowments will be mature?

“Endowments" won first prize for poetry in the Bridport Prize, 2011