Little angel-faced one,
whose heart was open to me
like the fields of the valley,
whose kind words were welcome
like the warmth of the sun
when the window is glazed with frost,
do you remember how I came to you
when your breasts were but teardrops
on sullen daisies crouching under the wind
and netted in a green fiasco?
Do you remember how I was
but a trembling leaf in the gale
that was your devotion?

Little dreamy-headed one,
whose ways were gentle to me
like the stream that glides over the vale,
whose voice was the sound
of all other things being forgotten,
do you remember how you came to me
when my heart was but an empty road,
spilling out across a wilderness
like the ribbon that fell from your hair
when, in the sylvan shadows, we first kissed?
Do you remember how you were then?
Like a basket of flowers
floating down a moonlit river
when I lifted you up
to cradle you in my arms
and then set you back
into the swirling waters to one day
drift into the arms of another.

Dear little smiling one,
whose blush was rosy
like a summer evening horizon,
whose eyes were soft with care
and bright with teasing lights,
do you remember when I knew you
and you were young like daybreak
waiting for the hours to unfold
with the satin petals of the purple crocus?
And do you remember when all the riches
of your heart lay before me, blinding,
like a city of a thousand golden spires
shimmering in the perihelion sun?

Tell me you remember it, my darling one.
Tell me so before I am gone from this world.

Like Mad Sweeney in the rushes,
    I was on my hands and knees in the bog,
Pawing through a bank of heather,
    Examining every pink feathery bolt
From Addergoole to Leathanach.
    Looking like an intent philatelist,
I was belly down on the peat beach
    Of the bog pond studying with my spyglass
The cloying droplets on the spiked head
    Of the sundew, limpid globes refracting
The pale diffuse light of the condensing sky.
  I bid my fortune for the bulb of a delicate lily
I planted in nourishing soil and watered
  Reverently until it gurgled up through the dirt
And budded, firm, waxy, and full of conceit.
  And, when it bloomed, I thought its leaves
Had grabbed hold of the sun
  And plucked it from the sky.
And there were spots in its yellow hollow
  Like the freckles on your cheeks.
I gathered the balmy mauve arrays of the lilac bush
  Into the barn by the cart load
Until it was full to the rafters,
  And we had to move the hay bales
And bags of barley seed into the house.
  Then I slept for a week in there
With only the company of swallows
  And contented dreams induced by the intoxicating
Air of my flowery asylum.
  I stood with my ankles swallowed by the mire
Where the mallow of the glade spends
  Its fragrant coin in a carnival of winds.
I searched out the ruby-throated hummingbird
  Where its iridescent plumage
And the blurred trajectory of its tiny wings
  Hover, liked a stopped watch,
In the sweet drooping blossoms of the honeysuckle.
  I scavenged the ocean reefs for corals,
Rare and strange, and glowing anemones
  With supple radiating arms of anesthetizing poisons.
I stood under the hot poker sun
  In an orange expanse of desert poppies
Listening to the monotonous worksong of bumble bees.
  But your hair was softer than starlight,
And your tears were gentler than the dew
  That beads on the fields of wild clover
On the brightest morning of the longest day of the year.
  For I have scoured the land and the sea
For a beauty the equal of thee.
  And what have I found
From this bare patch of ground?
  That my heart shall never be free.

Gone from me like the hours
  displaced by sleep and words
that once had meaning like a poem...
  now only a scaffolding left standing
in the ruins of memory.

Gone from me like the time
  when every moment teetered
on the threshold of a dream
  and the clock's tick was an abstraction
with meaning yet to come.

Gone like the school days
  when our playground was a universe,
a chestnut was a lump of gold,
  and the swing was your chariot...
and I pushed you high into the stars.

Gone away from me like the farm
  on a bend in the river and the pike
that charged off into the deep
  with a splash of excitement
when I surprised it in the rushes.

  Gone far from me like the road
that empties out into the hills,
  carrying with it a caravan of yesterdays.
Gone like the kite loose in the twisting wind,
  a broken twine dangling from my hand.

But the memory of you is present,
  a token of the oceans of time that washed
over me when I first kissed your face,
  an everlasting beauty that towers
above the world like the pillars of heaven.