I remember the urgent knocking of the

heart's small fist before a school elocution,

or running into a nun round a corner

and made idiot by that prim mouth,

those flawless skirts. There were

agonised deputations to the sitting room

at home, to ask some muddy-booted,

cigarette-smelling visitor about tea.

Shy.

That quivering emotion belonged perhaps

to quiet bedrooms on winter afternoons

in near-forgotten, hill-encircled towns

where children lisped tentative answers

to the questions of some serene matriarch,

and ate, anguished by undisguisable crunching,

the brittle butter biscuits from her tins.

That slow ordeal between the window's lace

and the fire burning in the grate

was the established manner of being young.

To be shy now is odd or impolite: no one

expects it. There's no longer the implication

of grace in being reserved. Yet doggedly

I remain the girl once bent over a shirt

on Sundays, ironing alone through afternoons

ill-defined by the monsoon's whimsical light.

It was only when coloured dream matched

the pressing to perfection of stiffened cuff

or pleated skirt, that I possessed all the clarity,

all the beauty in the world.