Thief of my sleep, the heartbreak clock
wakes me in Europe as the small hours crawl
westwards towards the Atlantic’s heave and fall.
Through the dark window I see their foreign stars.
The village I was born in is five thousand miles away.
One I loved lies buried in Africa.
Earth makes me smaller than a drop of memory
on the rim of an old man’s dream
before some unforetold and final dawn.
Two thousand years ago, somewhere Jesus was born
into a night like this. The heavens turn.
Earth grows colder as love recedes from us.
Your four dimensions in which my soul is lost
like a compass needle in a haystack of despair,
how shall I find my way to the love of the past?
Beyond the door I hear my daughter’s cry
in her baby sleep. Her mother lifts her head.
In the street below a soldier’s feet go by.
Wherever I turn the unquiet fears like rats
scutter across the night of the human heart.
Wherever I turn I meet the ghost goodbye.
Evil goodbye that will not let love live,
how shall I light the way through shame and sorrow
for the love of today and the innocent love of tomorrow?
Here I lie in the night, a homeless one,
ready to suffer, for love’s sake willing to give
all I can claim for myself, or am, or have.
My baby cries and my sweetheart lifts her head.
And tomorrow lies in wait with the morning paper
and a headline that will stab all kindness dead.
