Body and Soul

 The last day of June, and it's a hot one – not ideal for travelling to London, but that's what I'll be doing, heading for Heathrow, there to board a flight for Canada very early tomorrow morning. This will be the first visit to our daughter and family since they moved from New Zealand to Prince Edward Island. I'm looking forward to everything except the journey.
  By way of a parting gift, here is a poem by Donald Justice which I came across the other day. I think it is rather beautiful, especially the last section...

Body and Soul

1  Hotel

If there was something one of them held back, 
It was too inadvertent or too small
To matter to the other, after all.

Afterwards, they were quiet, and lay apart,
And heard the beating of the city's heart,
Meaning the sirens and the street cries, meaning
At dawn the whispery great street-sweeper cleaning
The things of night up, almost silently.

And all was as it had been and would be.


2  Rain

The new umbrella, suddenly blowing free,
Escaped across the car hoods dangerously,
And we ran after – 
                               only to be lost
Somewhere along the avenues, long avenues
Toward evening pierced with rain; or down some mews
Whose very cobbles once the young Hart Crane
Had washed with a golden urine mixed with rain.


3  Street Musician

A cold evening. The saxophonist shivers
Inside his doorway and ignores the givers
Dropping their change into his upturned hat.
High now or proud, he leans back out of that,
Lifting his horn in some old bluesy riff
His fingers just do manage, being stiff –
Yet so sincere, so naked that it hurts.
Punk teens, in pink hair-spikes and torn T-shirts,
Drift past; a horse-cop towers above the cars;
And office lights wink on in place of stars.

Silence of cities suddenly and the snow
Turning to rain and back again to snow...