Light, and the absence of time,
The green shadows of leaves
On the pavement, and the last bus gone
With the classmates… He is alone,

They have all returned again
Like Virgil, to the world of men –
Bunny, Drix and Snodzer Quinn,
Phil who died of heroin

On the London streets. The crying stops –
He sees the sacred, the profane,
The heavens, hells, the depths
Poor Admiral sank to, dead in Spain

Of his dread disease –
The suicides, celebrities,
The circles of the damned
And the sanctified…. Now, this peace

They call I Am. The paradise
Only a bye-child knows
Who reads, with cried-out eyes,
The sentences in perfect prose

Of the Sybil, as a breeze
Scatters their meaning forever
On the pavement… shadows of leaves,
A greenness at the starting over,

Light ingathering, like an ocean,
All the tragic years, emotions –
Boys grown old, and Virgil gone
To fetch the next lost son.

Harry Clifton’s most recent collection of poems is Gone Self Storm (Bloodaxe)