Pregnant blue-grey clouds

Threaten rain a second time.

The bitter winter yields to fairer weather,

Two hundred tearful, frigid nights

Undone by you in one embrace:

Your skin, your hair, your eyes conspire

And I am lost again,

Seduced, and wantonly, by perfume

And the touch of leather.

Will you object when I take your seat? For sure, there'll be something going wrong. No-one would dispute it. But you could justify yourself; think long enough and you'll justify anything. "Jesus may've said love your enemies," you'll blurt out, "but he didn't say I couldn't make more of them."

Even in your apology you'll betray the will to power.

A sort of conversion, they say.

Not from the old to the new,

So much as from sheen to lacquer,

From smooth to flat,

From perhaps to tomorrow.

In these subtle shifts, we find

The unexpected whiff of famil-

iarity:

A replacement radio, without the interference,

With still the same voices

and still the same programmes.

The sun sets behind that pinker sky

Which was grey from behind a dirty pane of glass

Which was contingent, not

necessary

and blossom falls

and a leaf

and a gate swings just like it used to:

a sort of conversion, they say.