Your Reading

Your Reading

It was a clear night
With a moon in the wintry air
Visible in the crowded sky
And a stillness
About the freneticism
Of the streets –

I walked as far as Soho,
Out by Foyles and
Stretched my open palm
In the direction of your reading
Then went back
Where I’d walked
To follow my tracks
Like an old cat
In search of pizza and wine.

And for a while
You did come with me:
Your “garden” which
Fell “so slowly into the
Brown stillness of Autumn,”
The rat you saw
Boldly in front of you
In the moonlight –
And I thought just to be
With someone who listened to me
Was alright

Since you too were listening with me,
Listening to the café
Listening to the streets:
The low stories from the upper storeys
Basement stories
Floating up to the street –

And I stopped worrying
About missing your reading
And was reassured by the thought
Of your blue-covered book by our bed and
How often you wrote “blau”
And “blaue” and how the last line
Of one of your poems*
Was a metaphor that
Wrapped round my schoolboy wanderings
Perfectly tuned to my adolescent heart
Like an eerie mist from somewhere far,
And how again you are here
Still burning, Georg, your obscure star
In the blue air.


“Lass, wenn trunken von Wein das Haupt in der Gosse sinkt”
Georg Trakl 1887-1914