Rembrandt's Bathsheba.

FILM ROLLS ON

 grains, congeals into-

You and I.

No breath between us and Bathsheba.

Our hips drawn together, a dance, inside Museé Du Lourve.

Later we will recreate the scene in a small apartment,

I kneel at your feet.

No breath between us but an echo where fingers and hips find rhythms.

The

drip

drip

drip

of the brass taps, keep your tempo.

The greatest and most natural movement.

Later we wake and walk the dusk light

To buy groceries.

In those days you would hold my hand in secret,

And when I fell asleep

You’d trace letters on my wrists.

Messages to me.

Nothing as sacred as those days in what follows.

Months bleed journeys

NEXT CLIP

We smoke cigarettes outside jazz clubs in the dark monotone of an acid ridden New York.

NEXT CLIP

We lock our hearts to the Charles Bridge and, dancing on the banks of the Mala Strana, throw away the keys.

NEXT CLIP

We take taxis around London, finding our palms crossed and our gazes averted in the back of black cabs.

NEXT CLIP

One day to return, we said, to Paris,

Aching in our poverty .

When commodity appears it is indeed

A very queer thing.

Painfully fashionable, we said, to revisit

The café where we had once drunk

From chipped china cups.

Dutiful symmetry

To find the city

Abounding in metaphysical

Subtleties and theological niceties.

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This summer it will be five years too late to

kiss your fingers.

Five years too late to

lay you down amongst your father’s book.

Let me make you a pillow of the Oxford Dictionary and play your favourite record.

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Crystallises the curve of your smile.

In the years that follow

Bombs cry down.

Each shivering and shining

Like the teardrops on windows in Paris.

Like the slow drip of the tap.

Back to that scene, Rembrandt looks on.

In a sentimental anomaly

I still hold the messages you left on my wrists.

I still read your letters

Cream paper, frayed edges.

I still smile when the calendar graces your birthday.

News of you came just three days after. In photographs I reconcile your smile with my laughter. What followed you was a five year winter. No breath between us, no more scenes to capture.

I still dust your records each November.

It is five years too late to play them

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devoid of action