Relationship in Two Parts

David Sergeant

I

If I open my eyes
Outside the sun
Will sluice away from them

Like water from the deck of a tilting ship.
This morning you accused me
Of making too much toast. 

I hung my head, guilty 
Of your previous accusations.
Outside the sun is hoisted up

And burning hugely in a cold sky:
The bus wheezes and shuffles its feet,
Turns me this way and that

Like a bored photographer.
Silence in the kitchen, silence behind me:
Dim awareness of the morning light

Flaring in across the tabletop, 
The two half-empty coffee cups, 
The pot of jam translucently red
Like a jellied heart in glass.

II

I’ll bring you out here, to where the cliffs
Pretend a lethal drop
But harbour little playrooms of themselves
Beneath the lip.
Scrambling down
The thrift and samphire shrug and dip,
Virgin to sight: possession

Of persistent love
Has brought them through the rip
And preoccupied whinny
Of the conquering wind.
I will not point out the lesson.
The boulders sleep like lichened seals.
The gleeful water ferries back and forth.