The Chess Queen

Where a scar of sunlight leaks

some Eros for the dead

on to the low mist gap

in a haphazard afternoon

of errands that once existed,

a scarecrow with a yellow star

and silver flowers at her hips

gives the steadfast company

of affectionate immortality

to the dull world mood.

Someone is gone, someone

is sure to go, into the fruitful

afterlife of the ochre-coloured

twentyfirst-century water

newly cleansing over snowy

cobblestones old as the city.

The sound of the sun purifies

the spirits of erased aeroplanes

as long as they shimmer.