The Candle

The night comes down, and distant engines whine
upon the motorways. Yeats, ninety-nine years
have separated us. Before my birth
a woman out of Spiritus Mundi rose,
walked, and still walks, beside me. Holiday
makers are conveyed across my ears,
and I may rest assured (your song proved this)
that she's not one of them, unless, perhaps,
some young road-weary scribbler in her cell
shuttles among the mean and medium;
Ill-fashioned for this age, dishevelled, vague -

a candle swings and burns my vision out,
save for a timid rustling in the breast.

I cannot name her, for who names a ghost
that kicks the dust upon a stair, that moves
a cup, that rattles in a sugar dish?
She floats around my modest room, a gust
on the casement windows, or the ticking sounds
the furnace makes, will send her flying out.
A man clings desperately to what he loves;
you know that; and that I'm a man who knows
true desperation, blackest futility,
for what I love's imponderable to my touch.

A candle swings, and slide on cords of light
the twin doves of the image of my love.



mid to late 80s