APART

The cold green hillside, where we stood and kissed

looking over mountains to the steel-bright sea

is held by my heart, like a clenching fist;

the long-gone togetherness of you and me.

 

We shall end this love as we once began

with our lives stretched separate across the plain,

and the small stone house where we loved and sang

shall never find us venturing back again.

 

So we met, so we talked, so we laughed and drank

and we read, and wrote, each other poetry,

and an hour under rowans by the chill stream bank

will be longer than a lifetime’s years to me.