Britain after the Romans All the metalled roads of Norfolk Now bare, The ghosts of your Sandled feet. Each blue shadow Holds an absence, A negation, A husk, Unwieldy, Impossible to stow. Every church I pass has you in it. Your grace And fullness. Magnetic Madonna Singing Magdalen. There, Where we walked in the dry heat, Flint and brick-hard clay. You in light coral, Your body dancing beneath the silk. Here, In the rutted stubble Blistering August, Sticky flesh, Burnt skin. Where we made love on ripened wheat: Your cries mixed with The maddened joy of lark-song. In the orchard clearing, Where you spent that summer In the old tent. A Suffolk Cleopatra. Embroidered robes and gowns, Your courtiers were insects. Naked on the grass, Amongst the restless gravestones. The scent of you laced With hay And sunshine. Rousing out Those earthly bones, Drawing wormy smiles From the lips of the dead. A winter’s night On the Warham lane, A marsh racing sky, When you held my chest, my back, My heart within. I, then lost utterly To adoration, To a false contract Written long ago In my mothers womb. At dusk by the ford, Great Walsingham. The moon a newborn crescent, A blue jewel suspended, Pooling in your perfect eyes. Staring yet From Rapunzel’s Lonely tower. A Daisy, a Dandelion In the lap of the soil, Bound by the prison of inheritance. My words, My poetry, Lived for you. Resurrected from the tomb Of a broken marriage. Your beauty- That rarest alloy of glamour And earth. Sensuality, Hot mischief, Wisdom, Poise. You brought so many riches To my country; Incense, cut flowers Market stall treasures. Your big cracked-tooth smile Those giving lips. The theatre of your wardrobe Enriching everything, Turning up the light in the world. You gave me back my love of colour, Of beautiful things, And things done beautifully. You awoke my tongue to the foreign wonder Of a simple plant based diet, Eating as a vital prayer, Energy, Purity and goodness. We shared a lifetime of conversation About everything, In four gravid years. Making art of our evenings, our days Our mornings and our nights. Your sharp intuition Educated me. You spun gold, Thread wisdom From carded chaos. We strode together fearlessly, Elastic chained trust held Fast between us. To the underworld, Its dread heavy chambers. To the darkest parts, Each grasping the hilt Of the others hand. Coaxing, pushing, leading With a ‘being in it’ blade. Slashing old wounds open, Disembowelling Ancient fossilised pain, Drawing teeth from the Demons. Committing murder As a sacrifice On our unborn child. There was no place we could not go Together, But that last place, Where it near killed me to know I could not follow. Now your passing is written in the flight of crows. On the fields, Back lanes and hedgerows, In the woodpile, In the quiet kitchen, Across the gold pillowcases, Hanging from the empty coat-hangers. Crouching in the bleeding silence, Of another evening, Alone. All is history now And in the forgetting. Under a blanket of Fallen powdered snow, Sequinned with Diamond sunset light. I ponder now Those headboard headstones, Where in love we once lay On a warm summers night. And with a pink chill in my fingers I lower down the corpse full Pain of your parting shot. Say ‘farewell sweet soul’ Broken pottery and coins. My heart like Boudicca, Beats no more now, Within your Legionnaire’s Blood. And even as the fire of passion Comes as quick As ever it goes. Love is the only thing I am sure of. In the hearth of my gut An eternal ember glows. A seed now requiring My own breath, To waken it, To whisper, To conjure And to grow.