Bear with me if I put an end to this:
She never turned to him;she never leaned
under the sallow-willow over to him
They never made love;not there;not here;
not anywhere;there was no winter journey;
no aconite,no birdsong and no jasmine.
No woodland and no river and no weir.
Listen.this is the noise of myth.It makes
the same scent as shadow.Can you hear it?
Daylight greys in the preceptories
the head begins to shine
pivoting the plants of a harsh nativity.
They were never mine.This is mine.
This sequence of evicted possibilities.
Displaced facts.Tricks of light.Reflections.
Invention.Legend.Myth.What you will.
The shifts and fluencies are infinite.
The moving parts are marvellous. Consider
how the bereavements of the definite
Are eaily lifted from our heroine
She may or may not.She was or wasn't
by the water at his side as dark
waited abbove the Western countryside.
O consolations of the craft
How we put
the old poultices on the old sores,
the same mirrors to the old magic.Look.
The scene returns.The willow sees itself
drowning in the weir and the woman
gives the kiss of myth her human heat.
Reflections.Reflections.He becomes her lover.
The old romances make no bones about it.
The long and short of it.The end and the beggining.
The glories and the ornaments are mted.
And when the story ends the song is over.
There in the distance,bonnetted,
round as the hairline of a child-
indefinite and infinite with hope-
is the horizon,is the past and all they look forward is memory.
