salle des pas perdus – poitiers

hall of lost footsteps

fugitive hot whispered words

scabrous ancestral songs

*

judgments from the court

of love whose lust-drunk troubadours

inspire my spirit:

*

a joy for living

a past that never passes

a loss still unlost

*

in this hallowed space

– oak beams, flagstones, marbled walls –

still footfalls echo

***

I long for you much

as I listen to music

whose sadnesses touch

*

my heart still aching

from madnesses and rage that

haunt this rabid present –

*

let’s celebrate life

in songs of now, here, as in those

footfalls of the past

*

we find in absence

a beauty missing in presence

sometimes, timeless love

*

**

*

Omm

1 january 2019