Sometimes, the love comes again | blown like a memory of summer in a sachet of warm air | in autumn | surprising you | The description deepens | there are colonnades, trellises, wisteria | perhaps even hussars parading | It is the description that matters | for most of the time, anyway | Meaning resides | in the details | the Caffe Sicilia cups | of white china | the man with a doll’s face, a little like | Andres Iniesta | you knew from years ago but hardly | remembered | such things | absorb you | time is how they pass | The statements matter as well, of course | they are like blasts on trumpets | fanfares by unfurled flags | drum rolls | the bold statements | the flourishes, the definitives | but then, somewhat bathetically, we are back to autumn, and the shorter days | the angina, the vagina, the munitions | the conditions | the description | And with the love, comes the sorrow | a kind of anchor | at which the ship drags | the vital, the precious | ship | with all those souls on board | praying to their gods or sternly | studying barometers | or, swathed in gilt, issuing clipped orders | and everyone | both passengers and crew | fret as the storm continues | to build | in intensity | their unuttered cry being | Let us survive, so that we may go on describing | who we are and what we are and where | we are | every delicate, mundane | why and wherefore | how we each | rebel from the mass | and confirm to the tribe | that we wish to live on | to feel that sadness again | on the train, in the office, in the bed beside | someone who makes us | feel so alone | the acute, diffuse sorrow | like vaporised diamond | like mist | floating on wisteria | that state, or mood, or illusion | indulgence | vision | that meaning | that conclusion | which is yet so very | difficult to describe…

A scent of honeysuckle near dusk | the evening quite still | the neighbours playing Beck | The bricks, if we stroked them | would be rough | the step | yet to be taken | not so high | it was higher | once | Clouds, still dimly visible | like Calais or the Duomo | float by | in the calm surface of a pool | of water let fall | by last night’s storm

 

from the series fleeting pixel (series of 1,000 poems, 2012–2016)
(this poem, October 2015)