The wind cuts through this January night

Slicing like a razor through the skin of my face

Signs on the road hidden by an iron fog

The cry of the wind is all in vain.

Love crossed this black hole in time.

In the old be-jewelled, spider-webbed

Way kisses when young are tender and long,

Not in this frost-filled graveyard,

Where the dead remain unusually silent;

Yew tree shadows the moon.

All around the scattered remains

Eviscerated by all that time can do to human blood,

Hearts, lips, eyes and brains  

In earth-infected graves

No pretended disguise.

To toast her with her living eyes.

Languidly loved on a lullaby-day

Sharing an ancient consciousness of what it is

To be a man, to be a woman.

Trapped by mortality in the this empty space.

As I stand alone in this freezing unghosted place

My insides squirm like snakes

A mere palimpsest of names and dates:

Unsoaked in perfume,

Unattended by lips like raspberries;

Tears do not leave her frost-whitened eyes.