I have found a quiet place
I have taken a photograph
Of your absence
Yesterday I found photographs
Days 2 to 3 on the canal boat
You looked swell, smiling
The moorhen
Appears to walk on water
As it skips across the lotus leaves
That you were happy
Is what struck me; somehow
We had touched the miracle of life
Now the moorhen’s sibling
Leads her away from the water
To the calm of the terra-firma
That love of no longer love
That love of pure escapism
The schism of disappearance
The insincere smitten life of sense
Intensity rises, intensity calls
Opportunity prises, immense in the falls
Soul and spirit: a deep and wilful critic
The cyclic nature of abandonment calls
Succession, procession, obsession
Fresh from the morning nap
Correction, inflection, dictation
Until the next time of passion
The fashion is as the fashion is
No longer is the fashion as the fashion was
Was that, what we did not talk about
That one day we too would grow old
Yet the cold caught hold before our time
Your bold move brought the curtain down
The certainty of your management
Sent out shock waves, which never settled
When I close this page
May the conversations continue
Between what maybe never was
And what maybe was never meant to be
Might that they should explore
How close, or how far
Their emotions floated, drifted
In search of a stable mooring
That they could open the faces
Of the pebbles, the stones, the oceans
Such that they could hear the music
Of a love line leaning, all pervading
Might that they ask one another
Also ask of themselves
Was there any further that we could have gone
Was there any nearer which we could have been
That I have to write more
Is that I have to write more
That I have to write less
Is that I have to write less
That less is more
Is more or less all there is to say
More about mercurial moments
Less about savage heartbreak
More about simple beauty
Less about ugly indifference
That less is more
Is more or less all I am able to offer
Less about what is lost
More about what survived
Less about what disappears
More about what reappears
That more is less
Is more or less all that I have left
I am collating
I am facilitating
I am taking on board
Other men’s words
I am regurgitating
I am re-envisioning
I am once more contemplating
Other men’s thoughts
Yet I do see the sunlight
Yes, I do hear the birdsong
I do listen
To the prayers of morning meditation
Also, there
In the light of the candle
I am among that purity
I am alight with the love
