The cruel dawn and the wind of forgetting
blow away the memories, dreams and sounds of the dead.
Before the chrysalis of dawn breaks open
and the round-as-orange sticky day unfurls its mossy wings
your memory appears again like an old tinker’s fire,
November’s nostalgic ashes discovered under creamy May trees.

Anak pitih, you rainbow, seemed to appear
only when the air was propitious
vanishing as easily as the seven colours,
coming again when least unexpected, like raindrops.
Naked and smooth as appleskin you would ripen me
in the thickening morning light,
too young for the volcanoes and honey of adolescence,
your face was mysterious in immaturity,
gentle lips, resiliently round, enclosing my world
(a whole world) against all other worlds.
A flower that knew its own name
the air was scented with your happiness
and wonderful spirits danced in the clear space
between the lips of the morning’s breeze.

But darker things rose from those spaces too,
darker than shadows, colours we don’t want to see.
Dense and inevitable as the reluctant planets,
sharper than rumour they came slicing.
The end, when it came, was as quick as sunrise.
Your antithesis, the law, descended like bats
to unlove us.