Kathleen Raine Remembers Sandaig Poem by Sally Evans

I lost Gavin Maxwell's otter.
It walked out one day,
a passing scoundrel clubbed it down,
dead in a ditch it lay.

Gavin wanted travel and fear,
he wanted sex with men
in Tangier and in Agadir
where the pains of death are ten.

Our great affair was fate, not love.
His lover I'd never be,
and to prove it I refused him
when, to prove it, he once asked me.

Now I am dead and Gavin too,
we shall not meet in heaven
(this death-pain was unknown to him,
I know there are eleven) .

His books sold tens of thousands,
my poetry books sold tens.
Now on the beach at Sandaig
let other lives make sense.

Now on the beach at Sandaig
let other otters run,
and on Northumberland's bleak moor
our double past be dumb.

Drey 2011