For Clare

(i)

It’s winter now
and all I want is fire and silence,
Venus a soft blaze in the pre-dawn dark,

the day clear before me
as the door shuts behind you;
your absence echoing the cave

flickering the walls as I write;
the murmur of your words
blurs, turning and returning,

almost audible beside me;
life shivering – as I stand
smoking in the doorway of the morning

– through me, icy, vital, sweet as newly-needled chi.

(ii)

And all I want – day done – is to point out
between clouds the clarity of stars
acutely so and so and so in the night sky:

Orion’s belt, the Bull’s red eye,
the Seven Sisters’ mist of silver
(disappearing as you looked directly at it);

to intimate in my touch their touch,
time so cold, so sharp, in the passing dark
it pierced us like a glint of intuition                                                                            

– the warmth of your hands, and then your lips –
to let it in: the whole human moment,
immense and tiny, mortal, poor, but fine as the leafless filigree                                  

of moonlit trees,