For R.

*

Today
I went where the monks once walked –
where the rain cannot come,
and on the stones of a thousand years
I remembered a morning
when the world was raining
but for you.

*

You know, too recently I’ve been dreaming
of Sitka spruce and snow in the mountain’s shadow:
twelve hundred days since I have seen
the elf-candle light the Abendland.

*

In the days of youth and yore I worried
that we had not sought truth in the right direction,
but you only laughed, and said the blind
would lead the blind to paradise.

*

Tomorrow I will take the whale-road
and the vows of our childhood will pass away.
In the days that come, you will love your woman well.
The colour of sunset will fade from your curls.
You will grow old on the polders;
your will martyr our memories

until a hush falls over the hearth
and you tell your grandchildren
that once you knew a girl from the south,
where poppies bleed in winter.