hommage

the one act you did 
that I felt was right 
unlike all the others, out of 
kilter with your bad-luck 
judgement skewing whatever 
you aimed at was

the swathing of those lights
in crisp black cloth, until,
even from afar in their
black inverse force they heralded
a signature, a hand-sign,
a fact of absence

they swirled in neat swathe 
and tuck, gathered and 
fluted, perfect - I wonder 
if all those people in and 
out of our doors 
noticed them

as I did, with bright 
tears at the corners of my 
eyes, their iced-up blue 
swimming in sorrow that 
spread a long-thawed 
hypothermia to my heart

they were a stage-piece, a 
set-piece to your busy hands, 
a satisfaction, an act of 
self blatantly self-centred 
like your striding down the 
hillside declaiming

with your rod
the solstice begun, and our
parts on: spoken over the
flames' bright burning in the
sunset, the candles which
prefigured, guttering red in the dark

in their small cluster
around pan's cloven feet, his stony
flute playing silence
through the night frost, and the
flames of my life, now,
laid with love on her grave

previous poem