On 1/23/2012 1:45 PM, Chokh Raj wrote:
> The Good Neighbour
> by John Burnside*
> http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1180
> Enjoy!
> CR
>
> *John Burnside, winner of TS Eliot poetry prize for 2011 for 'Black Cat
> Bone'

Getting this back on topic (just a little) the text of the poem is here:
    http://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2010/11/ideal-reader.html

I can see each of the first three stanzas standing alone (except with 
the title)
as a poem unto itself.  The third stanza brings in a trace of TSE:

    He watches what I watch, tastes what I taste:
    on winter nights, the snow; in summer, sky.
    He listens for the bird lines in the clouds
    and, like that ghost companion in the old
    explorers' tales, that phantom in the sleet,
    fifth in a party of four, he's not quite there,
    but not quite inexistent, nonetheless;

CR's link to 
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1180
is to an audio recording of Burnside reading the poem.

Regards,
     Rick Parker