Poem for Louis MacNeice

ALWAYS

“There will always be people” wrote Louis MacNeice

as he watched September arrive at his doorstep in Hampstead,

and he watched the embers of a cigarette stub fade

a memory of his lover who had fled into the future alone

always alone

always alone

he thought and wrote,

I sit at my kitchen table watching night become morning

it is not September and I am not Louis, but this second of February

holds something in its beginning, as I think of her keys to the flat

hanging from the wall never to be used again

always alone

always alone

I think and write,

The coffee remains hot for a while longer

sounds of cars, a few cars driving away from my city

always noise and silence vie for these moments

always loneliness fights with birds for a song that moves the hours,

maybe yes

maybe no,

always an ending

that stutters and falters as it gets to the door,

Louis wrote that he would always remember her

but I stand in these years where his “conditions of love will be changed,”

or are they the same? The language of hearts, a woman’s heart

are hard to decipher, to decode, as the quiet of a morning takes

to the busyness of a day’s labor,

always alone

always alone

with pen, with paper.