Low-slung August sun shadows stonework into the
deeper shadow lands —
phantoms adrift on the wide Sargasso sea —
so unruffled, these lawns,
and all this frumpery.

So much then has time
and its opposite
done for me.

It was along these lines we walked, it was beneath these swaying poplars we kissed;
and now memory passes strange lines of time over me.

All, all I can think of
in your marbled hand so small and cold in mine,
so much space, so little time —

and, as I board the National Express coach to Manchester,
and see the poplar trees sway
and shift the shadows of that day away,
I hear your voice
whispering to me
of the strangeness that awaits me
in the darkness of the wide Sargasso sea.