From the North
–Edwin Morgan

The Divide
–Edwin Morgan
I keep thinking of you – which is ridiculous.
These years between us like a sea.
and dignity that came with growing older
would stop my pencil on the paper.
The player was open; you asked for the Stones;
got that, got steaming coffee, conversation.
The heavy curtains kept a wild night out.
I keep thinking of your eyes, your hands.
There is no reason for it, none at all.
You would say I can’t be what I’m not,
yet I can’t not be what I am.
Where does that leave us? What can we do?
The silence after Jagger was like a cloak
I’d have thrown over you – only the wind
was left, and the clock ticked as you sipped,
clutching the green mug in both hands.
Don’t look up suddenly like that!
How hard is not to watch you.
We had got to the stage of not talking
and not worrying, and that
was almost happy. Then, late,
When you lay on one elbow on the carpet
I could feel nothing but that hot knife
of pain telling me what it was
and I can’t tell you about it, not one word.

Estranged
–Edwin Morgan

When You Go
–Edwin Morgan
When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there’s nothing I’d be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

The Welcome
–Edwin Morgan
When love comes late, but fated,
the very ground seems on fire with tongues of running time,
and conscious hearts are speaking
of the long vistas closed in clouds
by lonely waters, all goodbyes
where the swallow is a shadow
swooping back, like youth, to silence.

If all goodbyes could be drowned in one welcome,
and the pain of waiting be washed from a hundred street-corners,
and dry rebuffs and grey regrets, backs marching into rain
slip like a film from the soiled spirit made new –
I’d take that late gift, and those tongues
of fire would burn out in our
thankful fountains, to the sea.