In memory of Sam Griffiths.

The trees were gloved in that wedding-dress white, like
Floury fingers after baking.
And I had one hand dipped in my scrying bowl, and one
Eye on the looking-glass. And I missed the City, and what it used to do,
The way it would sigh and lean round distant corners, and sparkle
With the glamorous light of New Year’s Eve, and
The people with their black gloves and scarves, and their laughter
And sideways-conversations, and stepping into the gutter and then,
You, steadying my arm. It was as though the whole wide world was steeped
In an epic black and white movie sequence, and it was
Sacrilege to be moving.
The world tipped back in its chair lazily, and looked meanly at us all.
The people in the City sighed a little, and sipped their champagne,
And teetered off the pavements.
I stood immobile in the hoarfrost – I had no right,
I had no right to cry.

It was June when everything thawed. We became unfrozen,
It was like New Year’s Eve again – the people in the City put up again
Their lights and danced asymmetrically in the alleys.
I put up a sign. I was moving away. I did not want, anymore, to be subject to
Casual freezings, or faced with the guilt of motion. So I packed and went
To the City, where the only thing cold was the cocktails, and the cat did not mew,
Loudly, in the starlight at 11 o’clock. I also did not wake up to the sound of
Sheep and their plaintive sonnets of Baa in the mornings.
I wanted to find another you in the hot equator of the City roads. To do so,
I needed to learn to dance lopsidedly, to learn to talk noisily with my friends,
To cover the sounds of the cat.
While I was there, I learnt to make other sounds, sounds that were as mournful as
The poetry of the farm animals. These sounds happened when all good
Sounds should happen – when your frosty breaths are retreating out of your body
And into the dark night.
Eventually, the City realised that its warmth could not touch my old, hawthorn heart.
So I went again, back to the frigid bridleways and the greeting of the animals
Every morning, and I learnt that there’s something painful in silence and not moving,
Especially when the hoarfrost lies down, tentatively, on
Something relatively new, like a gravestone, or a bed-sheet turning stiffly in the
Wintry air.