Only the Common Miracle

...between your face and your face...

It isn’t much to ask, only the common miracle, in the silent speech of lovers, the way I want to talk to you, and you to me,

is only a small sight away from angelic voices pouring out of blue skies without a single cloud

when you turn round and wonder who spoke to you but nobody’s there

except on your left the same dusty track and the dry grass with the single fig tree in the field

and beyond its stone walls, the mountain and on your right, the sea;

or when you stand astonished, in a street in some foreign city, thinking you heard a friend

greet you in your own language, someone very familiar once, you haven’t seen for years

with the same old voice, laughing, playful, perhaps even slightly ironic,

and everything you had forgotten suddenly clears before you in the naked morning light, as the blood rushes to your head

and you forget your errand, the traffic stops, and the buildings start whirling about you;

or when, at passion's crest you open your eyes a moment to keep resurrection at bay

and between the face of the person you love and the face of the person you love

another face appears on the wave you’ve never seen before but always have known and will know

and a gap opens for a voice, which isn’t yours or mine, but we both hear quite clearly, and recognise,

and understand, and adore, because you know as well as I do, my love, that it’s your voice, not mine;

it’s not much to ask, only the common miracle, but people like you and me have been travelling

like this for years, along the same dirt track through the same city streets the same weary beds

foreign in our own country, no longer recognising the speech of men or women we know, of our own flesh

So how then can we be expected to converse with angels or even with old friends, long dead,

let alone speak the language of love, let alone the language of love?

From 'Black Light', published in For the Living, Salt, Cambridge, 2004