Given another chance, stay
In the Cloud-beloved Mountain
Therein hit by the illness up to the age of twenty-four
Hospitalised at thirty-six, the shirt blue and white with sleeves broad
Serving dishes with boxes of tight buckles.
Twenty years of writing till death, persecuted by a world
I have a splendid dog to be running with, across wild surging fields.
There swirls non-stop my father’s kite reel.
No one hates me no more, the same loves me no more.
No one convinces me of happiness, nor convinces me of sorrow.
The sunset bursts into brimful lights in purple.
The Devine Bird in banana woods is this small.
—It picks me up. A white flower in my hair from an old lover’s hand,
I sit on the rock of our question flow in the day of yore.
Still my mother’s shape is of her twenty-nine.
My mother’ hair curly and long sweeping on the face of mine.
She says, wake up, it’s our time to go. And I won’t be curious,
I won’t feel the mist, and won’t hear people,
won’t choose to trust or hesitate for doubt.
The wind sends here golden scents of rape blooms.
That is home. That is death.
I’d be swelled and flown in the wind.
July 2022
London