John Burnside - Amor Vincit Omnia
John Burnside
Amor Vincit Omnia
Find me when summer ends and the lamps
are everything.
I have practised being the one
to whom you return,
if not the betrothed, then at least
the autumnal familiar,
the almost unveiled.
Songlike and lost in the mist, I have made you a bed
of fingerprints and outlook and those
footsteps that go in the dark
through a litmus of snow
to seek benediction.
Call it a house of cards,
or a hall of mirrors,
but nothing will measure you here
and find you wanting.
(From: John Burnside, The Hunt in the Forest, London: Cape Poetry, 2009).