Your ash danced for a moment on the south wind
and dissolved over the dune, like a tear in the sea.
I hadn’t expected it, but it satisfied me:
when I come here in future, I’ll breathe you in!
Will I also sniff the scents again
of your hair, your perfume, your warm belly too?
Your mouth so long since I leant towards you
for a last kiss, and how pure it was then.
Now I kiss sky and sun and wind and cloud,
a blade of grass, a spring on a branch,
but also the longest and sharpest thorns,
and barbed wire and a broken glass,
so I will bleed, my darling one,
until all mankind sings of you.
