The geraniums are in
And the logs are piled high,
The chestnuts are gathered
And across the grey sky
The wild ducks are flying
Away, away,
We’ll come back in Springtime,
Some day, some day!
1987
Category Archives: Time
Rome Revisited
I travelled light this time
And came to Rome without
Religious certainty
To pin my conscience down,
Free now to excavate,
From strata of belief
And primitive taboos,
Some vestiges of truth.
Now, gods and ages merge.
Inscriptions, sculpted all
By one perennial hand,
In unison proclaim
The noble promises
And hollow alibis
Of each successive age.
St. Peter’s colonnades
And fallen architraves
Of Augustan temples
Possess this in common:
All are, terminally,
Fatalistically,
In varying stages
Of decomposition.
No crying of the geese,
High on the Capitol,
Can protect the City
Against time and reason.
13th November 1990
Lichens of the mind
I come each year to where my father lies
And read again the polished granite stone,
Which tells me that he died on such a date,
At such an age and may he Rest in Peace.
The formula is bare, so much unsaid,
And with each year becomes more indistinct
As images I hold become concealed
Behind eroding lichens of the mind.
August 1985
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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