Time for the moon

Running rest-day ...

... here's another Ruth Padel poem, from her 1998 collection entitled: 'Rembrandt Would Have Loved You'.

It's a powerful - and passionate - volume all about a love-affair, and this is my favourite poem from the collection:


BED-TIME

Time to go to bed again. Time for the moon
To get in among the muddle of arms and legs,
Get completely unstrung and set free
And hold on to you. Because you've done
All this but are also the one thing
That'll hold me, lost in this narrow room

As if it's Pharaoh's mine of slippery agate,
Flashing quartz chambers
Where I could wander for years

Now changed to an arch of green cedars
And a wild-honey garden of mist and secret walks
With cyclamen in the shade, a tiltyard
Of tiered lawns rising and rising - to sundials, mazes
And driftwood igloos seeing off dew from their walls
At dawn. Because of you. Because of you.