The time a bedtime story takes

Two by Glyn Maxwell

SOUTH-EAST OF EDEN

Together they took the least space they could.

Entered each other deeply, to be less,

to throw one shadow only, to be still

for all the world while moving for each other.

So space, so barely dented, might not bruise

and cry, and time come running. This was why

their breaths were held inside till the only end

of that -- this side of nothing -- the great sigh

that gives the place away . . .

                               And out they come,

exiting one another with the kiss

to heal the bruise and be the bruise and there

they sit. The only angel in this case

came only there to point them, in their first

amazing silence, to two peaceful desks.

BIRTHPLACE

Hard to remember, now there is nothing here,

that there was once nothing here. Hard to remember

they paused in a field with a plot for a field and a feel

of a place in mind and a little know of horses

     faraway in a corner stood there

pretty much where that kittle knot of horses

stands. The railway ran through the white template,

the life and death of it, made east and west

of nowhere. North and south it left itself

     whichever way one looked.

Hard to remember now that it's all begun

that it all began and, now that it's all over,

hard to recall it's gone. Those who are gone

arrive in a crest of steam and the late-lamented

     help them with their boxes.

Those to the east have a shed and those to the west

a greenhouse, it was a field and not a field

hereafter, it was a path through new houses

and a sweetship. There was a lane and another lane

     which, crossing it, was obliged

to name what it was named and the five things

needed they built buildings for. A meadow

reared its set of gardens like farm-children
edging behind houses to belong there,

     to cluster and imagine

a gate that is always shut will be always open.

But for now the horizon was sky and a blackberry hedge

and the north was the nettle-bed, and the south the roses

and the east and archway to those sad allotments,

     and the west a banded twilight

as out they build, in the time a bedtime story

takes to ferry me shipshape to tomorrow;

out they build till I wake and the horizon's

gone. It won't be found until it's wept to

     on a holiday. The town

is mine, this side of town is mine, the homes

go strolling by, then, bowing out of sight

they scurry round the world to be back in time

for when I pass, as if they never budged,

     and a chuckle of wood-chimes

From Glyn Maxwell, Pluto, 2013.