IX

Oh this gradual coming together as sleep lifts away from bodies resting just apart but then a little turn on the pillow knees touch there is the slightest kiss of a nose a mingling of feet hands may rest atop a thigh and touch experimentally This is such bliss all consuming no thought but each body’s press and caress so slightly so gently given until hands and limbs and kisses and the dearest stroking fills us to the brim with that longing which only the deeper kiss can quench Afterwards we watch from our attic bedroom leaves departing their trees

X

The steep steps and Doric pillars eight in all gather us into an entranced gloom only to spill us out into the light and space of galleries filled with Cyprian artefacts an owl with a removable head more porcelain than even your great aunt could look at but in a corner there were these bowls from Syria 12C and earlier Michael Cardew could have thrown and patterned but didn’t One in Iranian green inscribed thus blessing prosperity glory grace joy happiness security and long life to the owner  nothing more surely ever to be wished for ever to be wanted

XI

My Chinese heroine has a soulmate: Jilia’s deer in flight across a page of Somerset Soft White and Tengin mould oh the verse of Hafiz 14C Sufi mystic flowing into the body of this running beast Rejoice you lonely seeker of the scented path out of the wilderness the perfumed deer has come and there was more in different hands paper parchment poems exquisitely rendered into living words In a frame Goethe’s leaves of the Gingo Biloba stuck to his letter of love to married Marianne This leaf from a tree in the East has been given to my garden

XII

Captivating in beauty glowing silvery-white petals flutter down to lay a blanket of snow beneath the flowering trees and miraculously they did and more to make us wonder that negative space could be so powerfully wrought Hiroshige the master in his element of the winter snows eloquent landscapes figures on the Edo to Kyoto road the detail of raised up clogs and warm layered garments of a Geisha walking out with her maid the stone blue waters the pale reflecting skies the delicate embossing of waves and the flow of hillsides the ukiyo-e woodblock prints pictures of the floating world

XIII

Wearing purple and red your near to Advent colours grace this table we lunch at before a final walk through the city full of our time here amongst the towers and chapels and more history and art than we can manage for the time being Again and always whelmed over by your beauty seen against the press and clutter the clustering in the peopled streets the bicycled roads and in this one o’clock restaurant’s clamour how is it that my eyes are wholly on you my ears only hearing your sweet voice my fingers reaching out to touch you again?