The 18th of October was my late partner’s birthday. Two years ago I celebrated it with him in Ireland—in a cancer hospital. This is what happened this year:

18 October 2015

18

What You Sought, and What You Found

My eyes will simply never open wider. Yours will lock mine in,
surrender all the dreams your strength of mind has gathered, set the spin
that sends us dancing round and round, and then they’ll open further—yours.
Deep inside, the stair that climbs down ever lower corridors,

as ghosts walk by in solemn shifts of spirit-flesh—as wet hands melt
toward the midnight meeting-hour when finally the love-words spelt
out loud between dreamt beings who cannot but hover through the fold
where one old garment keeps its secrets warm, though long black time is cold:

Find that little envelope of cotton rag, and prize its lid
away from all the lovely letters someone in your soul once hid
toward the higher moment when the purpose that gave ink to lines
that wavered through a mind so subtle, they inscribed their own designs

arrived at its most dreamt-of place where songs are kept recorded, each
and every one, and when we play them back, the ones who made them reach
a nearer stage of understanding where they’re from, and why they came
to sing out loud in such a place. So hard, so sick with riddled blame,

so fertile with such inadvertent sadness, and so nightly lorn,
I might have to cast my eyes aside and pray to all unborn
imaginings, don’t ever let your best attention sway at all.
This is no mere meeting-place of gods and mind; the deep dark fall

calls down through skies and trees and level fields and lasting mists and black,
black new and no Moon nights the human crying ghost who calls love back,
delivers it its newest message, holds its hand although it’s faint,
and stares down through its eyes so ancient—there’s the longest love-lorn plaint,

and there’s the meeting-moment; there’s the place of tears that outlast pain.
Open only slightly wider—dilate love, then come again
upon the silent rise where all the winds the very tides raise high
turn into storms up on the land—and you thought we came here to die.