An ending so unlike that which the heart prepared for.
Under a snowy sky that soothes like a trepanner’s drill
the pavement scents the coming rain;
the stink of boiling cabbages affronts the thousand passersby,
silent in their communal privacies. Snow and head colds
conspire with color and the lack of color against the twin
tyrannies of weather and reason, while the heart prevails
its ejaculations of faith, transforming the mundane proof
with a freak of nature, a blast of hothouse jasmine
that would sear the castles down.
But common sense, which moves the sun and stars,
is sabotaged by benefit of one remembered gaze.
From a passing train, or in a rainswept quad, eyes like torches
sceptering the fog: a sudden shocking look of love.