I want you to know one thing You know how this is

If I look at the crystal moon At the red branch of the slow autumn at my window If I touch near the fire the impalpable ash Or the wrinkled body of the log Everything carries me to you As if everything that exists - aromas, light, metals Were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me

Well, now If little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you Little by little If suddenly you forget me Do not look for me For I shall already have forgotten you

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots Remember That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms And my roots will set off to seek another land

But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me With implacable sweetness If each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me Ahh my love, ahh my own, in me all that fire is repeated In me nothing is extinguished or forgotten My love feeds on your love, beloved And as long as you live, it will be in your arms without leaving mine

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good...

I thought I'd lost you. But you said I'm imbued

in the fabric of things, the way that wax lost from batik shapes the pattern where the dye won't take I make the space around you,

as so allow you shape. And always you'll feel the traces of that wax soaked far into the weave: the air around your gestures,

the silence after you speak. That's me, that slight wind between your hand and what you're reaching for, chair and paper, book or cup:

that close, where I am: between where breath ends, air starts