Spark

The gray winds of autumn blow and swirl
in a dance with death around me
whistle and whine through a window-crack
spinning mad red leaves into great heaps.

Human souls lonely and alone
weighed down by their fleshy freight
trudge up hill.

There are no lovers in England.
For to be a lover one must be curved like light,
curved like the wing of a swallow,
unbearably dual,
untamed.

And there are no swallows in England.
Here all learn to hate lovers,
to sneer and turn awry
smouldering jealously
while swans in pairs swim by.

October, 1989