Are you of the aeons before time,
how do we ken, us forlorn
of this speck of a world?
Blank we saw the canopy of our world
where stars blink in the dark night
and wept for a love caring and kind;
Lost, fatherless, orphaned
out of our childhood dreams
and we went searching hither
Gilgamesh to the horizon and back;
And you smiled, peasant woman,
hair streaking across the clouds
over the hills, across the vales;
In the still depths, an assurance;
Senora, or is time of the aeon before?
So long before that era then
to us forlorn of this speck of a world,
it matters not, it matters not

I want to write of those times
before we started counting the years
words like beads, precious
like none before,
crimson dabbed in evening light
the heart, by the riverbank;
When we walked across the town
lost, unconcerned;
Them sanctuaries and vespers
that consecrated a nameless love
unborn, yet painting the horizon
red like a distant dawn;
Song of the drums welcoming
the Autumn Goddess;
And we ascended the sky
and knew not, when
the wheel of time that giant eye
stole past us:
and we land counting
the years, steps and dreams
that were lost, never to return.

Then I must long for you, mourning
like the lark long after light -
fires shivering in the distant night,
shriveling bush in winter,
for her warm wings of green
aflame in a sacred time;
There go the buds that never bloomed
dug in the earth with the coffins
waiting for redemption;
Senora, breathe into my neck
like you are nowhere:
let me swim with you in those
phantasms that your eyelids conjure
past the whorls and eddies and currents
up the hills where in blood
are painted tales of the past,
daggers dug up the heart
treasured, it is mulled, mutual
the sour pressed red;
And then with wings gliding
past the valleys long after light
unuttered the hymns of the heart
that sing of you, flooding
and swallowing the embers
lingering on in the shadows of
the withered rose, long gone;
Then I must long for you, mourning
like the lark long after light.

And then draped in your cloak
shimmering like the dark night
hair streaking past your eyes
them leaves across the wet moon
when you turn looking back at me
I can believe in a hundred rebirths
and die breathing like the sun at dusk
drowning in the distant sea
bleeding across the horizon
mourned by the gulls
Senora, I don't know you
and yet I do, friend across the ages,
here we meet again

now the day is done:
gone all the song-masters
and dream-makers;
and now, I am alone
by your side.

Sometimes, you escape me
and then this giant stride
straight into my heart;

Ceaseless in waves.

Love scattered across your forehead
like stars flickering over
the eastern sky:

Is it your hair that flits
across your smile in the breeze?

Senora, the swallows have been
shot like a bow and they
go screeching over the horizon
echoing in the distance;

Let me hold your hand and
site by your side like this:
scarce these quiet hours
that mull like the blue moon
in the hours before dawn.

And then She goes by this way
silken past the dew-tipped grass
in the company of the morning winds
still blushing in the caresses
of blooming buds of the mountains
hewed in the distant silence
Nobody knows where to
but she walks knowing;
sometimes smiling, looking back,
hair flitting past her poem eyes:
and the valley gasps;
and when She's gone with the sky
and smoke, I gather myself,
life chugging away.

Painted against the sky this prayer
in golden green, one more feather
to the warbler and whistle-bird
a carpet of dew-wet leaves
welcoming the Autumn Goddess
to this our forlorn world
tiled homes wilting at the horizon
from smoke rising in the morning
mists, rising high the distant
lure of the modern life.
Yet here is a clearance in the
once jungle abiding by the rivulet
where red and purple those
flowers of the unknown kinds
lose themselves in the colours
of the Autumn Goddess who
rides the winds with her
bow of the the fading green
brooding thoughts of undying pain
in the depths of eternal pining
of earth for the heavens