The snows came late that year 

A blanket of white

Thin, crisp, brief, soon crusted with dirt 

Lit by a failing grey sun 

Along paths rutted and hard 

Sunk as scars into the hillside 

Where you came alone 

No bag, no greeting, hardly a shadow 

Dark silhouette against the skyline 

Moving fast towards me 

Determined, ever closer, to halt 

Well within earshot but still a distance 

“Do you still want to love me?” 

More shout than question 

“I do” 

“Then come. Come now” 

“I can’t” 

“Then your love means nothing” 

We looked at each other 

Hearing for the first time 

The wind heading where he wanted us to go 

The cold insistent, gnawing at flesh 

Bringing tears, holding his words in a mist 

He waited, looking, hardly moving 

Just the gentle sway of his coat 

His hair moving in the breeze 

His scent now present and alive 

Then he turned 

And life as we had known it 

Ended as quickly as the snow melt. 

I met Mark Rothko the other day

Coming out of a downtown bar

With his friend de Kooning

And others too, Pollock, Newman and Clyfford Still

They were all there

Some the worse for wear

Some dead drunk and wordless with it 

Rothko told me he had run out of paint

I offered to lend him some

But he refused 

His paint was special

Not just any paint  

Oh no, his has luminescence

A very particular reverberation

A presence like no other

Hard to find is Rothko’s paint 

So I told him that I’d go anywhere right now 

To find him more

So that he could go on painting

So that he could stop drinking 

And not have to take so many pills

But he just laughed at me

Told me to go home and write another poem  

Why not come too? I said I could make the dinner

And in the morning we could take a walk

To feel the morning sun upon our face

But he just laughed again and turned

To haul himself along the sidewalk  

Sucked along as if by fate

To change the world  

And leave it to the Tate. 

There across the empty bay

Far out upon a sea of greens and grey

Lie soft receding shades of white 

Frail portents of the coming night

Fast drip the horizon’s lengthening shadows

Across the olive mirrored foamy shallows

To spread their hues against a cobalt sky 

Now comes a silhouette of swirling swallows 

Rising and falling amidst pearlescent blues 

Their loose formations of evasive flight 

As dancing notes upon this glorious sight

Yet will the new day still come again

To hear the West Wind’s bleak refrain 

For tomorrow returns but to those that face 

The power of Nature and God’s good grace 

Or is the sinner left alone

For slights and insult to atone 

To use this scene of fading time 

To resurrect the pain and crimes 

Of abandoned love and broken promises 

Lost to the watery seaweed crevices

Another soul to save upon these beaches

A lesson life and beauty teaches. 

I can imagine the magnolia

Heaped with pink beauty

Amidst the shadow of the sun

Fast set into peeling umber stones 

Each a leak from history

Lasting stains of a city built for glamour 

I can see you cycle  

Across the river of dreams 

On your way to Mass

Or to those two famous cafés

 Now peopled by Americans of wealth  

Where once the Greats spent their last sou

I can hear the ring of a beckoning bell 

The girls in high fashion  

Forsaking their garrets for the boulevard

Sensing the warm air and buttery light

Their scents of youth catching the passer-by

For whom there is still time 

But what of Love and its consequence

Those forgotten couples that sat

Idle and wordless at tables in the street 

The artists that toiled the cold atelier 

With their long windows and iron balconies

Where the models could sip before the feast 

Give me their spirit and renown 

Cry out the colours of their work

Citizens of a world too infinite to last

Built with fine words, loose talk and truth

They knew how to love, to think

Such was their passion it curdled into stink  

J'imagine le magnolia 

Rempli de beauté rose 

Encadré de l'ombre du soleil

Placé dans les pierres de sienne épluchées

Chacun une fuite de l'histoire

Des taches d'une ville construite pour le glamour

Je peux te voir en bicyclette

De l'autre côté de la rivière des rêves

En route pour la messe 

Ou à ces deux cafés célèbres

Maintenant peuplés d'Américains riches

Où autrefois les Grands dépensaient leur dernier sou

Je peux entendre le son de la cloche qui fait l’appel

Les filles de la haute couture

 Abandonnant leurs mansardes pour le boulevard

 Sentir l'air chaud et la lumière beurrée

 Leurs parfums de jeunesse attrapent le passant

 Pour qui il reste encore du temps 

Mais de quoi l'amour et de ses conséquences

Ces couples oubliés qui se sont assis 

Inactifs et muets aux tables dans la rue

 Les artistes qui ont soufferts à l'atelier froid

 Avec leurs longues fenêtres et leurs balcons en fer

 Ou les modèles peuvent siroter avant le festin

Donne-moi leur esprit et leur renommée

Crier les couleurs de leur travail

Citoyens d'un monde trop infini pour durer 

Construit avec de belles paroles, des potins et la vérité 

Ils savaient aimer, penser 

Telle était leur passion qu'elle s'est transformée en puanteur. 

Is this madness or a shamed delusion 

That punctures every sleepy night 

With wild fantastical delights 

To drown the mind in sunk delirium

 Of a patterned dress

Falling from swan necked shoulders 

 Black bra revealed 

 Fresh swollen breasts agasp for air

  Stout boots, so easily removed

Their thick soles and heavy lacing

 Loosened with a swift and practiced hand

The heavy cardigan long gone

 Your high hipped underwear slipped 

As if unlaunched upon a sea of doubts 

To stand before each other 

 Utterly unclothed but standing proud 

Two confronting lovers that hold their breath 

Alone to be as one 

Or soon to be divided 

Parted by the flux of time and place  

Oh how the Gods have played with us 

In word and deed and rhyme

So have the heavens made their pleasure

And we our precious mortal time have spent

 Crawling to a cove of rocks and lost intent. 

We had met with others  

More than once 

Enough to want to find

 A time when we could be alone together  

No noise nor interruption 

Or distraction made for purpose 

Other than the joy of another’s company

 And the discovery, revelation and exchange  

That comes with strangers becoming friends

 A start perhaps for something ill defined 

That lurked upon the air

 As prompters stalk the wings

 Or fogs that roll upon the dawn 

To blanket all that’s grown familiar 

Or is our daily ritual sphere 

Yet there was touch

 An elbow here, a foot caressed

 A kiss of welcome and farewell  

These encounters with another’s soul 

Are taken for their memory

 Where lust and intimacy went

 It mattered not

 The time was gone, the moment spent.  

 If we are to be lovers

 Let it be because you smiled

 As you gently caught my eye 

Across a crowded table 

Or in a car park bay to bay 

One cold but sunny morning free 

If we are to be lovers

 Let it be for no reason save

 The joy of being alive 

 That we survived as others have

 Betrayal, deceit, disappointment, death 

Of loved ones and of dreams 

 If we are to be lovers

 Let it be because we are silent

When others seek to fill their void

 Since we can know the other’s want

 Before the kiss or touch of hand

 Have voiced their inner siren call  

 If we are to be lovers

 Let it be because we find

 A kindred spirit and a new found friend

 Each alone and brave and willing 

For connection and response

Two makeshift rafts upon an open sea. 

 I remember the hoar frost at dawn

The yellowed first light, the muffled sound

Of early birdsong and the fox’s farewell

Before the day begun in earnest

And the sun stuttered its feeble warmth

Upon the stones beside the water

Where you had come to swim

Ice had formed the day before 

Upon this very place  

But, undaunted, you stepped in 

As others shook their heads

Now distanced by a lost experience  

And the thrown off layers

Of clothes abandoned to the side 

The more to feel cold morning on their skin

 Biting and raw and breathless through to bone

 So did you slip the shore of ease

 To reach a new horizon and a shivered peace

 Made virtuous pleasure by a bowl of soup

 Oh men of old where are your stories now?

 You youths that once bestrode the world 

 With misplaced arrogance and pomp 

Now are you as shrivelled walnuts set 

While sea nymphs shun your manhoods

 To lose themselves in merriment and mock 

When once you stood as rock 

Now others ask, is this his cock? 

When the talking stopped 

The work done, silences come and gone

The bread and a few simple jokes shared

We found that a quiet confidence or two

Was all that remained

Hidden away from sharp eyes and ears

A memory in the making, not even half done

Waiting, wanting, feeling all under wraps

Until the very last moment

When the confidence we lacked finally arrived

To say more and to show something 

Of what lay beneath 

Stronger, bolder, fresh

More real and more generous

To remind us both

Though we had been told often enough

By those we respected 

Not to leave the living and the loving 

To the end.

It is not Autumn but full Summer strong

Horse chestnuts blaze with russet ochres

Raw sienna, pale yellows, thin greens

A sombre palette for skies of pallid grey

Fast milky clouds foreshadow rain

The sun burnt season out of kilter

Drops of time lost to an early silence

While those that wait have

No word upon the wave of branch and stem

Prayers are unanswered in their breath

For it is not in Nature to forgive 

Nor does the shimmering canopy forget

The sins the Father guiltily remits

To summary account, for the end lurks near

While the daughter will not turn

She has her version of the past

The father must resign content

In scribing this, his last lament

The die long cast in Autumn colours 

Nailed bitter taste and rotting odour.