Parted Lovers

I

Now at a parting of the ways,
When my life is breaking,
What is left for me O my darling Christ?
What holiness remains for parted lovers?

What yet stands between me
And the midsummer night?
It is you- always and only you,

There is song,
Out to sea,
Where beautiful fisher-boys
Cast their nets,
And where the young men
Deck their hair with shells,
And they dive, naked as day
Against the tide and ebbing away of light,

2.

Near the old lighthouse,
Where the children chase the shadows,
Midst the laburnum branches,
An Irish blackbird bird is whispering,
Sounding the days of the created earth,

All sensual joy is hers,
All Christ-like love and simplicity,

The wide cliffs and furrows of the earth,
The height and lowness,
The very wind, which scatters the seed,

She glides down
And peers in upon the sleeping
Her face up against the glass,
The dead phone by my bed,
Unanswered,
Dispossessed,
In some strange darkness,
My white face unawares,

3.

She knows,
One soul alone, separate and inseparable,

She knows,

The day I left him,
I couldn’t say more than goodbye,
But it never seems enough,

The pain,
Of I miss you,
The ache of far-flung distance

Since,
Lying alone,
Walking aboard,
Every song,
Every stranger,
Reminds me of him

No one could replace him
No pretty face, not another set of eyes,
It’s not the same, how could it be?

Summer sheets but no one to share them,
Sunsets but no one to see them through,
Sonnets but no one to write them for,

And yet I know
One soul alone, separate and inseparable,
And in that love I shall not falter.