THE FIRST MONTH OF THE YEAR

A page of the ‘Kelmscott’ Chaucer

Seen through out cottage window

When the Pennines were blind with snow

Flurrying round the stones.

The fire was low when I began to blow

That single flicker to a flame,

Was I too late, I wondered, the ‘poet in name’

Whose mind runs endlessly

As fingers through an old man’s hair?

(Either way I thought of you and your being there)

A portrait by Velasquez

Seen through the months of silence, vivid

As the door I painted scarlet for our love

When the wind joined us walking the moors;

The sculpture of Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse

Seen against the sadness is more eloquent

Than the sun: there is something I would waken

Other than that ageless sleeper, if I dare,

(The way I dream of you and our being there)