Artwork: Shmuel Shapiro, Two Lovers, 1966-7
The fourth in a set of poems entitled Lovers’ Quarantine
Here, the ongoing narrative of separated lovers is given wider spacial form, giving insight into prior motifs within an extended non-linear structure. The theme of regret is referenced, even burlesqued, through allusions to T. S. Eliot’s love poetry.
by Fred Baxter
Until they meet again
She is left only with the strain
Of a bundle of memories,
Tied by months of silences
And unravelled in these quiet hours,
Of chestnut hair nestled under a shower
Of dancing candlelight,
Glances under whispering purple nights;
Snapshots swim into her mind
As untouchable memory, lines
Of reel of all she should have done
Before people went out in ocean-blue gloves
And the streets were left half-mumbling,
Deserted retreats half-fumbling;
How she never had their legs interlocked
Under the table like washed socks, or mocked
Anger in one of those looks,
One of those looks…, or explored the nooks,
Never met in the moon-sunk churchyard
And drank from the web of stars,
Before rainbows assembled
At every window, and night trembled
Down at the lights of shut-up houses;
How she never asked his opinion of her blouses,
Or her skirts, what he really thought,
And laughed as he sought
To understand the pleats, the darts, the seams,
Walked out, she and him, where dull light gleamed
Upon the rocks as proof rocks know
When the tide will drown them, or showed
Him what she felt in writing,
In touches that had him igniting,
Or felt for herself his whitest skin
And found a beating heart within.
But there will be time, time
For clues and signs
In letters and hymn books,
In touches and in those looks,
Bound for now with silence,
Until they meet again.
