"Miles Away" by Carol Ann Duffy

[cinaed]

 I want you and you are not here. I pause

in this garden, breathing the colour thought is

before language into still air. Even your name

is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again

and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight

I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer

than the words I have you say you said before.

 

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me

with a look, standing here whilst cool late light

dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,

but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,

inventing love, until the calls of nightjars

interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,

into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.