will you still be there?

As though to compensate for yesterday's ballyhoo, a quiet afternoon & eve working quietly at my desk, interrupted only by the occasional daydreaming --

Those impossible, endless journeys with you.

 

*       *       *

A rocky headland dreamt of.
Its road jammed with cars,
with tangled crowds, police,
authority snared in its own grip.

As dusk cloaks us I leave the road,
walk the cliff edge. Tussocks and drops.
Rock-faces in darkness. Large shadow birds.

In the distant town can we buy food?
Like refugees.         Like distant bombs.
A stumbling return. Will you still be there?

Our babe-in-arms, you, me,
us three in this bare grey landscape.
No word reaches us, not even in dreams.
As though lost and searching, almost lost.


Lee Harwood, 'Fragment of an indecipherable inscription', in Collected Poems (Exeter: Shearsman, 2004), p. 483.