On Laval street where you lived
leaves rise twisted
in the wind’s snare
and building facades shiver—
night has a shaded face
a cry pressed into frozen vines.
On the balcony
did you sit, thought-heavy
high up from the wave-rocked street
sure of the poems
that were your life, a breakwater
tides reaching far from here?
This city that you left
has lightened from grey.
Summer in the park
past six o’clock, the drummers
dance on dirt
dressed in sweat and rain—
Yet I know your face
from the photograph. In your eyes
we see
the bite and hammer
of winter’s true hand.
I cannot go with you
forty years into silence
but shall stand on the edge
of a cracked
sidewalk for a moment
in your city
and say to you,
This is where the shades
of light and colour
are about to fall.