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There was a time, some time close to my heart,
Not long ago, where broad oaken archways
Met my path down lonely afternoons -
Their cloisters spangled with gusty light:
Nebulae of superstitions and old ideas
Clothed to look new,
Ink-run spines thresh against the dapple-blue
Grey of soft eventide.

That is a lost time, now, where
The bracing words and pages
Mottled yellow - brittle with tales of the universe
And beyond - were as uncharted skies to me,
Unfathomed: they rose taller than I could ever reach, up,
Up to the sun-bright, clear-night roof of the world
Which beckoned with starlight and fantasy.

You walked in at this time.
Treading on stairs of stars and old poetry,
A two-stepped, four-beat waltz. I'd read of love,
And though words held meaning, they were
Empty to me.
It came suddenly: a glorious surge of romance:
Passion, adrenaline sick and unrequited.
Yet I read on, tying meanings to empty words
With silver strings you pulled
To create beautiful ideas.

I followed these same creations, loyally, willingly,
Selfishly chasing them. They were written on water and
In crazed March snow: I loved them and you.
You stood by my side, two footsteps beside mine
As I walked the chocolate-box towns
And heard the same old romances
Struck on the blank keys
Of that monotone harpsichord of my mind.

That is the love I so envisaged.
Where the spun-glass spires of my own desires
Rose triumphant above that city of my heart:
The steeples gold with the faith in a God
Which (like the old poets) I still believe
To fold the glories of the world
In the palm of their great hand.

Though if life were as that fairytale,
Those towers would remain as untarnished
As you remain in my world;
Where what once was stays like flowers scattered
Across the floor of Chapel, faded now, but still
With that faint perfume of a Sunday afternoon:
Sickly sweet - like the yellow custard we'd have with strudel.
Remember that,
Remember those days which pass through the golden cloud
Of ethereal memory.

However, regardless of their glory, of
Their pride, peace or even their icy walls,
Which have etched upon them the many battles
Where Reason triumphed over Delirium,
Cities fall in times of idleness,
The walls struck down by that same pure Reason,
Steely-eyed and frosty-faced, bitter cold
Faceting explanation after explanation from age-old philosophy.

Now I sit as I did before, the sunned pages before me:
Guttering light, star-bright. I clutch onto that old time,
For still I am a romantic: the same ideas gilded with
New words and fresh faces.
(Reason brushes past as I remember you)
Bracing words, bracing draughts
As the door of the library is opened.
Your eyes are cold as mine - then, soften with the same smile
Which you wore in that broken dance of ours.
And it is only now that I realise:
Love is never lost.