When the band stopped playing at last,

turning off the music like a tap over a full basin,

when the lights finally went up, hard and strange as flares,

and it was time for closing-time hellos –

then we stumbled down the stairs and out

into the dregs of Saturday night,

the air a stagnant cocktail of cigarette ends in stale beer.

We tried to get away from it. Crossed a bridge.

Walked by the river, listening to water

plash on broken stone. All else quiet.

Now and again couples in their dark entwined statues.

The city slept, uneasily.

Where did we go then? I know we kept walking.

But the memory slides from me,

slips clear of my clumsy grasp like an eel,

hangs loosely in my mind’s sea. Churned-up sand clouds it.

It’s like an underexposed photograph

with only faint highlights showing:

the brash light of the city.

The dull metal of your earrings.

And your face

like polished bronze swathed softly in your hair.

In the dark of that morning

I did not tell you I loved you.

You did not say yes or no.

And we did not tumble into the abyss of each other

or trespass beyond truth.

And all the night got out of us

was a sigh like the fall of a feather;

even though, for a moment, there was nothing

in the world except our eyes.

Silence after that. At least

silence is what I remember.

The birds were the first to speak again,

rolling up their blinds, at five forty-five.

Cuckoos called. I whistled back. You smiled.

Above our heads, philosophising crows

laughed at the thought of minds embracing minds.

We sat down at last, at a table sticky from the night,

and watched the light pull in to our station;

it opened its doors, and out tumbled

the morning cleaning crew of pigeons

(with sparrows, sanitary inspectors),

street-urchin mynahs picking yesterday’s loose change,

and a few more loitering crows.

And as they worked and the dawn wrapped the world in its arms,

you spread yours wide, and yawned, and smiled,

and with our hands on the table, an inch apart,

we fell into the new day, and into sleep.

<< / >>