For K

[abu nuwas]

I know you, Grief; I know your bitter taste too well.

I'm happy now, we parted in a quiet,cheerful, way:

Yet there is no corpse, no wake, no-one whom I can tell.


The cold North Sea still ebbs and flows its blue and grey

So like the grey and blue of warm and loving eyes, back then;

Now we shall never wake and watch its breaking day.


We shall not stand in driving snow, as we did when

The frosty white all gleaming bright, it made us laugh and smile;

When did you stop? That counting 'X's four or ten?


Nor shall we sit again, with open fire, and heap

Of barky logs, and do the simple things, and touch, and talk

In any smoky cottage/ Venice suite – don't weep!



We shall not stand or sit or lie again, or walk;

Your eyes, your ears, your hair, your lips, your face, your you

Are banned. Do you have any plans? Like Paris, or New York?


Three years have passed since we first touched, yes, sad, but true.

Where we once were, soon will there be another 'we'? Who cares?

And will you say those things to him, which once I knew?


Why would I care what silly ill-cut clothes he wears?

Or if he laughs at jokes or turns of phrase which I had made?

Or if he scents our seas and snows, or does our dares?


Of course one day these memories of you will fade.

To-day beneath a chlorine Cross I lay, above a hundred more,

Yet crucified your thoughts still with me stayed.


What's this! Not me, my heart upon my sleeve all raw!

A swim, some snow, ascending wood-fire smoke and Autumn air:

I am not hurt; nor lost; nor grim and grinding poor!


Not Grief, at all; but Pride, my wounded Pride! Not rare!

And yet, and yet, if in the past...if if.. if if.. if if......

Need I have lost your face; and eyes; and hair?


A thing of sea you are, of sea, eroding cliffs

Where painted beach, and blackened fish,huts live beneath the sky.

It was the foolishnes of age, before my limbs turn stiff.


And who gets picked, K, who gets picked to die?

And what about the Saints, K, it could be you or I:

And what about the Saints, K, the ones they crucified?

Are they hand in hand upon the sand, K,

are they lying side by side?