After Lucretius II

-
an absence.

Though each thing dies
into its own becoming,
the shed skin falling away,
still beautiful:

an empty form,
but governed by the moon,
like bone,
or thaw;

and if we are the fleshed
and perishable shadows of a soul
that shifts and slides
beneath this everyday

appearance, we are bound
by greenness and decay to see ourselves
each in the other, staying
and turning aside,

as lovers do, unable to resist
this ebb and flow:
new animals, with nothing in their minds
but light and air,

the creatures
of a sudden mystery,
who hurry on
towards the difficult;



John Burnside