When You And I Were Young

when you & I were young we would press our white faces from the car & the rain on the windows would run through the gathering dark & the lampposts shone & dogs would run into the dying frame where the park was glowing dimly through the silence of the lanes & the radiators hum rose above the falling leaves where so fragile & so young you had drifted into sleep I've been for a walk & every face I see seems to be mine night-time comes the birds have flown a fever glows in every line I love this season this weary night the flint the dreams the silent pines the eeriness is in the feeling that I have finished everything & a child from the school was running back to her car & her white face cried she was deaf & afraid of the dark & the whispering house grew still as we stared into the night in the garden & the lamps & the window's fading light & though Christmas was the same, we had seen another year turning softly through the flames