This is the first poem in my very first book, and it's called 'Love Poem'.

Love Poem

There is no question
of choice, but it takes
a long time.

Love’s vacancies, the eye
& cavity, track
back to embraces

where the spine bends
& quietens
like smoke in the earth.

Your tongue, touching on song,
darkens all songs. Your touch
is almost a signature.

from Collected Poems (Carcanet , 2001), © Bill Manhire 2001, used by permission of the author and Carcanet Press Ltd.

Bill Manhire (b. 1946) was born in Invercargill, New Zealand, and joined the English Department at Victoria University, Wellington, in ...

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