Love's Confession

Beyond the confines of loss
In the absence of light
In the presence of absence
In the absence of present
In despair of the past to be lived again
And lost again........

Still I see you hovering as if through mist
Dripping tears over the contradictions
Of unused time
Over the absurdities of re-fused love.

Yet I offered you little enough with boasted thoughts
Speculating in comfort
On the ineffable,
As if I had thrown my mind to the dust
And the distance of disbelief in fixed eyes
Had swallowed like a city street
The sounds of grief in muffled
Crying
'So much pain out of the pores of gentleness'

And lying in the long grass
As we dreamed that we would do
Lazily swatting at the old words
Flies of a summer's day,
I wonder about the place of we
And why the earth feels hard
And if we loved at all
And when
And how
And why.

London 1968


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