A Long-Ago Castle
There was a vanished treaty
between us, an unfinished thing
in pieces of air,
in words of departure.
A promise across waters,
in amber remembered,
that I held bright, praying
for broken bells to ring.
Your signature, after I took
the hill, bloody and wracked,
dripped from lips with
wounded tone, but I
took it sincere, in a lampshade
way beneath the din of
the Turkish restaurant ,
beneath the pale light of
London black cabs.
Mine, as I stare now into
infinite regress of couch fabric
patterns, brutalist math
of spreadsheets, time punch cards,
Was holding something back
some patterned longing
with no words to name:
This would only be memories,
written on the parchment of
windbreaks and stream lines.
