Classic Poem

1.

They are survivors, the sole
occupants of this one guarded world.
The local repertory theatre packed
up & departed elsewhere. These two
old troupers stay on as the sweeper
plays his broom against the grain
backstage. They play out by agreement
the familiar angers to a suspension
of hostilities. A semi-believed in love
tried but haunted by its past. A
self-deceiving hope posturing the loss
of lives that went before of youth,
of partners had & names forgotten.
What holds at the seasons close
is passion flogged to life like a
single-piston engine, a sputtering
exchange of plenitude, the usual run
of days & dishes. The couple come home
to roost at last, tense & too aware.


2.

Squinting back down the telescoped
years as he had once through bombsights
to that recently freed city, after the
war & burnt out trams to how they
first met. He posted to Berlin and the
American sector, she from Baden Baden where
he had fallen for her. So agile & aerial,
a mermaid of the trapeze, star act of
an old fashioned circus. A picture framed in
time within the bleak cabaret of youth:
he uniform crisp & she in sequined tights
with her angels Wings of Desire
flared from bared shoulder-blades. They are
holding hands in celebration of the letter
M. Now, married into age & ageless
on an ancient Island, theirs is a love
old as childhood & wise as water. Solidly
based as the fist-backed rock of Uluru.