‘Night Marriage’

[  # 81 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

Night Marriage   . . .  by   Carol Ann Duffy

When I turn off the light
and the dark mile between us
crumples and falls,
you slip from your self to wait for me in my sleep,
the face of the moon sinking Into a cloud;

or I wake bereaved
from the long hours
I spend in your dreams,
an owl in the forest crying its soft vowels,
dark fish swimming under the river’s skin.

Night marriage. The small hours join us,
face to face as we sleep and dream;
the whole of the huge night is our room.

Re-printed from ‘The Times’,  Saturday September 3^rd, 2005