Your face, frame in a frame of itself
in the train window, moved off
and the northern sea fog swallowed you.
I played a pretend violin
in the train station quartet. In a Bogart movie
I walked the length of the platform.
In my mind we went
by separate roads up love’s stoney mountain.
Then at the sea’s grey side
I was running under the moments.
In each you were miles off
on the flat grain of the ploughland, half weary England
beaded with rain, white gulls
on the fenceposts.
In each then I wanted you
as the yawning fish on the boatmen’s slab
might say of the ocean. The want
swam away into nothing,
the sea in its envelope.
I’d have lived in the hollow of your shoulder.
I’d have been an idea in your skull.
I’d have read only the book of your name
never knowing what nights you looked out from.
My life turned on its mast in that town
years ago as that moment turned towards this.
Now I no longer want.
I recall only the North Sea chill
my voice becomes mist in.