Drawing

Drawing calmed you. Your poker infernal pen

Was like a branding iron. Objects

Suffered into their new presence, tortured

Into final position. As you drew

I felt released, calm. Time opened

When you drew the market at Benidorm.

I sat near you, scribbling something.

Hours burned away. The stall-keepers

Kept coming to see you had them properly.

We sat on those steps, in our rope-soles,

And were happy. Our tourist novelty

Had worn off, we knew our own ways

Through the town’s runs. We were familiar

Foreign objects. When he’d sold his bananas

The banana seller gave us a solo

Violin performance on his banana stalk.

Everybody crowded to praise your drawing.

You drew doggedly on, arresting details,

Till you had the whole scene imprisoned.

Here it is. You rescued for ever

Our otherwise lost morning. Your patience,

Your lip-gnawing scowl, got the portrait

Of a market-place that still slept

In the Middle Ages. Just before

It woke and disappeared

Under the screams of a million summer migrants

And the cliff of dazzling hotels. As your hand

Went under Heptonstall to be held

By endless darkness. While my pen travels on

Only two hundred miles from your hand,

Holding this memory of your red, white-spotted bandanna,

Your shorts, your short-sleeved jumper –

One of the thirty I lugged around Europe –

And your long brown legs, propping your pad,

And the contemplative calm

I drank from your concentrated quiet,

In this contemplative calm

Now I drink from your stillness that neither

Of us can disturb or escape.