Remembering Some Lines From A Favourite Poet

A phrase here, a line there

Toll their privilege through me;

Properties of the moment

Reverberate with love.

The secret signs return

In various guises,

The old enchantment

Still telling the rosary

Of my blood.

To please and bewilder

Is the poem’s heft;

A foreign self becomes

As one’s own heartbeat.

Everything is there and gone,

Flitting in and out of sight,

Too rich and exquisite

To exist for more than a second.

From these fires you flee

And to them you return,

Endebted to their cold burning.