Classic Poem

Ah me the hand upon the body
the whorled speech
that sings from fingertips a wordless melody
mounting with the delicate increasing touch
to a long cry in the mind can never reach
the end of the search.

Night has a thousand I O U's
signed with sighs
shaken out of the blood that floods imperious
the flesh touched delicately and by day these
flutter unhonoured along habitual byways
past averted eyes.

Or perhaps one that said tomorrow
is redeemed
by accident on the stair or in the mirror
where eyes look curiously into eyes doomed
for ever to look back curiously or dimmed
by what they dreamed.

For not eyes but hands only can see
in night's alley
that leads from nowhere nowhere and keeps busy
the shuddering direction-finder love's ally
pointing a staggering track to melancholy
through heaven's valley.

Ah me the seeing skin reports
certain replies
signalling a hasty offering of transports
and through the dark viaduct the eyeless music plays
with drums diminishing and frantic pleas
keep moving please .

The hand upon the body dies instead
of reason dying
though for some moments consciousness insisted
reason had died in the divine undoing
of ties with earth.
Sense now steadying
hears spirit crying.