Friedland’s
When you leave the bed and slip away
out of our lovers’ hide, into the hard day,
I lean my head against the wall and wonder
if all this world’s mad machine will sunder
a love that grows as true and wild as ours.
My eyes run round these blank white walls and ceiling
and the sightless window, I stunned at what feeling
we two, skin to skin, have generated here
from nothing but ourselves; and I fear
however wild and true, whatever the powers
of this love binding us now, stringing the streets
and leaping the rooves between us – all else competes
against it: all the millions in this city
broken in the search for our treasure – millions we pity
from the fortress of our arms when long hours
of loving lie beyond.
Dare we apart,
and again apart, defy by mere loving art
snatched here and there in the rubble of time and shelter –
dare we still defy the machine’s mad welter?