Mary MacRae
Ghazal
i.m. HV
Rainclouds have no colour of their own;
I want to write this wet on wet, like paint.
She craves colour and plunges into blue
deep as she can; yellow’s out of reach.
Absence is white. White sheets and pillows,
a white nightdress. White the colour of mourning.
Everything’s fragile now. In slow motion
the body’s structures - its walls and towers - subside.
The flow of life’s contained in a single line:
she holds one end and I hold the other.
Such zest as she tells of dawn on a mountain ridge,
it colours her cheek. We hardly hear her voice.
No-one knows the first breath, or the last.
The noise of rain arrives before the rain.
Her head’s above the clouds and the air’s so thin
I can hardly breathe, let alone say goodbye.
Rainclouds have no colour of their own;
I want to write this wet on wet, like paint.
She craves colour and plunges into blue
deep as she can; yellow’s out of reach.
Absence is white. White sheets and pillows,
a white nightdress. White the colour of mourning.
Everything’s fragile now. In slow motion
the body’s structures - its walls and towers - subside.
The flow of life’s contained in a single line:
she holds one end and I hold the other.
Such zest as she tells of dawn on a mountain ridge,
it colours her cheek. We hardly hear her voice.
No-one knows the first breath, or the last.
The noise of rain arrives before the rain.
Her head’s above the clouds and the air’s so thin
I can hardly breathe, let alone say goodbye.
Page(s) 18
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