Drifting in a small boat on a silent lake, the rain began to fall and the herons flew away as the wind blew the rain into in my face and scratched at the dark surface of the water in the faint greenish light of the autumn afternoon. Floating, floating…I sang a song for you on another day, in another life we lived.

All the moments, all the days we had, all the time I looked at you. I breathed the air of your departing words as you disappeared from view, your long hair swaying from side to side waving goodbye. You turned and smiled as the curtain closed and I lost you once again.

In time past.

Another time…

Waking up before the sun, laughing at the sky, summer days lost in a haze of red wine and cigarettes. We sang the blues in the afternoon until we cried like Robert Johnson’s keening guitar and Sonny Boy’s moaning harp. The burnished sun, diffused through the window’s translucent silk veil that shivered in the warm air, painted you in soft focus light like Leonardo’s sfumato brush. The contours of your naked body clothed in diaphanous pastel shades and limpid mystery – you smiled as the ecstatic light caressed your shadows and touched your lips. Now, we are shadows together in the second circle, never lost but never found – and gradually now, like yesterday, the disappearing room fades from view, I fade into you – we are gone.

Time passed.

Once again…

I close my eyes before the thorns and nails, the spirit and the bell; I look up before the thunder comes, waiting for the miracle. In the garden I see clouds among the flowers, I feel a song that I can’t hear. Now you speak to me in waves of light, you speak to me of then, you sing to me in shadows, you take my breath away among the roses and the perfume of the garden that we lost. Now I follow the smoke of your fire across the endless fields, dancing with autumn spirits to the rhythm of your rhymes, while between the silent stones the violet evening glows and John Barleycorn lies dying. Standing alone on a hillside, all is quiet in the English sky, save for the twittering swallows catching insects on the wing, swooping high and low in the twilight’s glimmering gold and Giotto’s starry blue. The night is time’s companion, time took all the nights I sang to you. And yet, in this crepuscular empyrean solitude, I feel no dread.

Time passing.

In memory…

Memories of cold fire burn the bridges of our time,

Still I follow the sound of the longing song,

Back to the time I have forgotten.

You open the gate of your garden, you let your perfume fill my mouth,

Just a taste is all I need, one more taste of your afterglow;

Another kiss, another smile, another touch before you go.

I remember everything – the memory of your light,

And watching the sun’s dark moment cross the great divide.

I will not die before the storm, I will not watch the dark,

All the light will one day fade and that one day will be the last,

In time and time before past time, in time before time passed.

Send a postcard, send a letter, send a souvenir.

It is time.

After the day…

Now – in this uncertain time – when only ghosts are free to fly, when churning oceans hurl their foaming flesh onto those shores that ships can never reach, when winter’s breath brings frosty death to every leaf and flower – yes now, in this uncertain time – we meet again. In our cold sky pricked by cold stars, distant suns are dying, other worlds are burning, but not in our time. It is not our time that lights our way, it is time past in time present and this is all that we can ever know. We meet again in this uncertain time, helpless in the ceaseless turning world. There is no still point for this turning world, no moment when time blinks, quiescent at that point where all is still; for time can never be still until the absolute point of stillness, when nothing turns, the fire is cold and the final point of light blinks off – there the still point will be.