Sometimes she would stay up late,
long after he’d gone to bed,
reading about ruined cities
submerged beneath the sea
off the north coast of Africa
where she had grown up
and he would strain his ears
to hear the pages turn,
imagining her swimming
just below the surface of the water
looking for headless statues
or stern carved faces with seaweed beards,
frightening the bright fish
into shoals of colour and fan-like shapes.
She had swum here too
when they’d first arrived,
diving deep into the coral reefs,
until they turned the boat back towards the shore
and made love for hours on one of the sandy beaches.

High on a ridge we lie in the sun
And gaze out over the fields below.
In one of them, the flames have begun
To plough through the stubble. It will glow
Long into the night, controlled burning
Preparing the ground for a new seeding.
The leaves on the trees are already turning,
Their colours red and brown and bleeding,
And there, behind the smell of smoke,
The smell of winter.

And I think how in our lives we fail
To burn the stubble, ashamed to let
Go, ashamed to let common sense prevail
And rid us of harvests soaked and wet.
All too often we do not allow
The new seeds room to breathe. We feed
On bad or failed harvests. And yet how
Can we be sure with letting go our need
To hold on, we will manage to escape
The smell of winter.

Across all the miles that separate us,
More than twenty years away from your home,
You tell me of an unloved city,
The honeysuckle and the baffled men
Who look at you like tourists.
 
You should be here where the sky is postcard blue,
Where the morning is a soft withdrawal of the night
And not another day you just have to live through.
For a whole day I've sat here waiting for you.
I saw the gypsy come early with his flowers and go.
I saw the nuns, like dominoes, wooden and stiff,
Toiling up the hill as the church bell lisped.
I saw the lunchtime shoppers, arms full of fruit,
And tasted the sweetness of cherries on my tongue.
I sat on waiting in the siesta sodden sun,
The slow hours of the afternoon, lazy voices speaking,
In the square, a beggar bent over a sandwich,
Looking at it the way some of us look at books.
In the evening a straggling queue began to form
Outside the bright, peeling posters of the theatre,
And I imagined you there, excited and eager to go.
A bootblack walked across to me as the evening fell,
His fingers bent and the colour of raw walnuts.
He stretched like an athlete preparing for a race
And told me had news from a faraway place.
He didn't, of course, so I just bought him a beer
And let him talk with his drunk tongue stubbing the words.
At midnight, we were swept back out into the street
And we hugged and said goodbye like old friends. 

I wrote this, Anna, because it's good to think that maybe
In another life, we might have passed by here together.

The twisted, bare branches
of the vines in winter
have something of the sea
and a memory of centuries
healing their gnarled amputations.
To see a vineyard, thus,
spread out across the earth
in neat little rows
is to look at stillness.
Or maybe it is patience.
The quiet, passive waiting for the inevitable.
The lurch out of silence into life.

July now and, though the base is untouched,
though there’s still the sea and an age,
still the same crippled shape in the branches,
an outside has blasted across the fields,
so green with the sun shining through them.
And from this abundant foliage, order,
at least to an exterior eye
which sees only one thing or its opposite.
Earth and objects only cannot falsify alone.
How easy it is to be happy.

And how easy to compare with snow
those fallen poplar seeds that covered
the ground towards the end of spring,
and so dry that, seeing soldiers
lighting fast, impermanent fires
like fuses to some explosion,
I, too, had to try and so bent
and clumsily set fire to a huge pile
which scorched a path
a yard wide across the grass
and burnt the hairs from your arm.
Later to step into the river,
not knowing that the seeds had spread
even that far, making it seem
more like the earth than water.

How much there is to give,
to learn about each other.
So much seems solid for so long and isn’t,
seems forgetting and is waiting.
So, slowly and with many deaths,
like the building of a cathedral,
it all accumulates, then disperses,
leaving time like a stork nesting.

But for towns, for cities, there is
not this hording of experience,
just monuments of cement and stone.
Memories can be found, of course,
An old wall in Logroño,
an aqueduct in Segovia,
but these memories are a comfort,
not a weight to be carried forward.
The difference between a mother’s kiss
and that of a lover leaving.

Strange how things live towards a point
which, when arrived at, nullifies
that which has gone before,
becomes the point from which its life begins.
The name Guernica does not mean
for many an oak tree, distant lords
swearing to respect the law.
It means either war or Picasso.

Life can only be built on levels of reaction,
extremes of light and measured darkness,
what exists and what is invented,
love where silence matters
and the sleeping world given in
to our far from careful keeping
when what there is in the head is too large.

We cast off the unimaginable and sad
and the intrusion of fact narrows
all boundaries to the certain,
growth permitted in one way only.
Ah, the half-truths of poetry,
the evasion, the huge deceit.

Near my house there is a mountain.
People call it el León Dormido,
and when seen from one side,
looking out from the city,
you can believe it to be so,
this lumbering, wind-modelled rock
really is a lion asleep.
So long as you never see it
from any other direction.

To make the journey happily
out along the dust road
or maybe even by train,
gripping a bag of grapes,
is to allow the truth and fact
to step into your present.
From one side the mountain’s magical,
from the other three it’s nothing,
not even much of a mountain.    

Too much examination can be bad
as we invent what it is we wish to see,
invent, distort and fabricate.
But when we find what lies behind,
the truth is there waiting for us
like an eagle high above the mountain
casting its shadow down across a fox.

Fending off scrubland and bare, blue mountain
Logroño huddles in a heap and appears to slide
Almost lazily away from the slow-moving river.
Originality created and arranged easily
By the gloom trapped inside each filthy passage.
Garbage piles against *****, brown walls,
Crammed together and splintering in the sun.
And now and again a scrap of paper
Will fill huge as a sail and deny these still
October nights with a careless movement,
******, obtrusive and far too sudden,
Like the iron bridge which astonishes the dark
With such bright lights and emptiness, asking
For the beige mac, the turned-up collar and trilby,
The mysterious meeting, the garbled message,
When there is only me and the stone Roman bridge,
Illuminated and from another time.
The road from Santiago and the sandalled
Pilgrim loaded down with belief are no more than
A thing remembered or to wish for. But still,
High above the town, the twin Baroque towers
Of the cathedral resist change, insist on
More than a casual glance as I stand here now,
Balconied above the square, safe with French songs,
Edith Piaf and my cultivated tongue
Which nobody understands, and their so strange
Words which I try to learn, and don’t.
Then suddenly to see you simply among
These narrow streets and crowds of people,
Long boots and beautiful, is more than enough
To recall something bright in life after all.

Astonished and made clumsy 
And faltering too often, 
The poet tires of these long 
Evenings of Chopin, Verlaine, 
And weird games upon the floor 
Where the law of averages 
Is consistently disproved.
 
Strange to think the girls I knew 
Are ladies now, and carrying 
Some small immortal baggage 
Inside, flickering with life. 
Crouching. Unsullied. With stumps 
For legs and eye like a fish. 
Sounds for all the world like love.
 
And I still in a rented room, 
Drenched with all this literature 
Which pumps me full of wild beliefs 
And the ability to squabble, 
Dare to wish I might have come 
And spilt my warmth into your life. 
And you smelling of babies.
 
Already the wind begins 
To creep through the heavy trees. 
The sunlight rummages across 
Some dull promontory where 
It is squandered and rubbed out. 
The poet tires of these long 
Evenings demanding nothing.

Where do you go to and not be afraid 
When suddenly you wake into your life 
And everything has run sadly away? 
Stroll out and breathe in the cold 
Fresh air. And look down at the feet 
Striding so definitely along past houses 
That lean back from the road and hide. 
And the heart beats slowly and clutches 
At something. All of those months away. 
A last piece of love. Some tiny regret. 
Forget the bad things that bring you sadness 
Now. Like the orange reflected from the lamp. 
Beneath which you wait. Dark puddles everywhere. 
Like some reason for being together. Still. 
But all your foundered loves remain. 
Huddled in corners that you walk past. 
Slowly. Hoping for some small voice, 
Glad to see you. Calling please don't go. 
It's so quiet it seems that all England sleeps. 
But you know that somewhere all of the puzzled 
Lovers of the town are trembling 
And reaching far across the damp night. 
Touching imaginary hearts that settle 
Into some piece of improbable brightness. 
Cozy and warm. And wanting to love. 
To be noticed. Tomorrow. As they fall into place. 
And try to find an excuse for touching. 
For breathing together. And you, too, will look. 
Before the nights get too long and you can't 
Wake up laughing when you rediscover 
There really is nothing. You too will look 
For that abstract perfection. Some reassurance. 
That love survives. If it exists at all.

All of the leavings become so hard.
Just to sit together with nothing.
Two people alone with a fat lump
Of years and loving to drag away.
To preserve somewhere. And later to
Bother with theories on happiness.
To sit. Waiting. No longer knowing
How to breach this pile of silence
That once was easy with a kiss.
And she bows her head and reaches out
A slim finger of the love that's left.
With no sign of laughter anymore.
Just the green eyes brimful with tears.
And to touch is all there is.
No calling out. Just to bite the lip
And force a smile that says     I can't.
And to look out sadly into the dark
Where she will always be walking. Back.
Towards you. But never calling    Yes.
And finally to fade into the muddle
Of swollen years which drop without
A sound. But just for this moment,
Sheltered in this café, are all the
Places in the world. And all the time.