to Brian Merrikin Hill

The meeting that we planned
never seemed to happen;
the ways from mind to mind
were cascading paths
of yellowing words.

Now there are only these 
arcane itineraries
to the secret house on the hill,
the haunts of gulls and the distant 
reaches of marram grass,
to the lonely altars and the black madonnas.

First published in Pennine Platform (Spring/Summer 1997)

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.