From a bench dedicated to lovers, Aberystwyth Castle.

I came here then: November,
Or in a light which translates morning
Slowly into visibility; the received walks
Patiently toward the receiver.

The seat anchored me with their weight,
I carried my instruments everywhere and their touch
Was deftly surgical, not explicit like diagnosis
But unearthing the pact they had left to full view.

Each of their links were close as the phrase
Demanded, so unbroken the idea
Of one cannot surface without the other,
Each a continued resonance, the answering beat;

Hearing it alone I mapped its return
To the source, its guarded centre, from where both
Had set out into whatever comes next, leaving their names
Malleable, an inscription to grant them permanence.

And then we came together, certain I could
Match them, or inherit a likeness,
The sheet-metal sea was fixed in our outlook
While the rain perfected you.

You kiss me on the platform
And the world rights itself;
In the time taken for my breath
To escape into yours, the two
Are inseparable.

There is an interlude where the trees
Suddenly discontinue, the land you had half
Interpreted is transferred from behind glass
To brickwork, a liminal point
The engineer has created without knowing;

Each window becomes a screen trained
Inward, our responses reflected for observation,
Though we are no closer,
Waiting for a cue to enter
Back into the shift of ignorable country,

A sloping bank or cluster of mountains,
The biggest of the pack, whose name
We would not care to remember,
Continuing as a constant to link
Us back, or suggest home.

Already the features have exchanged
Accents, a switch at the border,
And language moves from hand to hand,
Remodelled with the speaker’s preference,
An interrupted call is re-established;

The train frees itself at the same speed,
Returning to the set-up you expect,
But it tricks you; in the dark so many things
Altered infintiesimally, here and elsewhere,
With the echo you have always been listening for.

From above, one bulb can measure the zones
Left empty, inactivity making them cold to enter.

We tell more than either can know,
Relaying signals from one point of intersection

To another, informed of each tremor made
By our own scale, the proximity

We focus toward
Or distance we accept;

Any night, one might face the blank wall,
Following a single crack escalating

Like a fracture, as if searching
For something unexpected;

Laid parallel, another is opened to the outside,
Guessing the furniture out of the dark,

Though each is found equally alien,
Equally unreadable;

To attempt it, both can turn
Inward, the decision leaving

Two columns unoccupied for the centre
Mark of sheltered heat,

The willingness to know another
As you scarcely know yourself,

And like this, by instinct,
You find my hand.

We walk together,
Reaching a stony watch-point,
Unfolding ourselves.

At intervals along the drained shore,
Settled to stasis between tidal shifts,
A vacated shell suggests a little
Of the life that gave it up,

Materials bartered for a slow flame
Exhale finally, having collected something of those
Centred around their debris and smoke,
Clinging to fibres, singling them out.

A switched perspective lowers the landmarks
To a framework, allowing us to isolate
The stretch of beach where our
Footprints shorten gradually,

Marking our transience
In a network of shingle and stone,
Where all points here;
To what we are, or might be.

I have made my report;
And each recipient, in a singular way,
Has become responsive to you,
Can listen for your breath,
Its slow distinctions and variants,
Or expect a look I know you by
To greet them at the crossing,
On the platform, at the door.

You’re circulating from synapse to synapse,
The reader using up their guesses
To flesh out a detail, to pinpoint you
As you were then, rendered in symbols
We understand separately;
Rebuilt on each self-sustaining word,
Two likenesses, vulnerable and open as we were,
Will occupy a room that is nothing like ours.