At Munich airport - January

Beneath the cool serenity
of a still-distant sky,
below the tubing
and the crystal panes of glass,
Beside the anonymity
of the scanning arch,
the middle eastern lady,
surprising, both guard
and handmaiden
– lush, brown, rich –
chocolate, date, and coffee - smiles,
with a slight ironic tint.
Life in a dead world.

'Remove your jackets, both,
and put your keys and coins
above them in the box.'

… ebony hair and ice-pale
skin in piecemeal perception
behind me,
soul-close behind me … a distant
immanence, a tress of mind
… a small grey mole on her right cheek,
quite high, a dusky island
in a silver sea

… a mourning squeal,
a cautious glance
from the quicksilver sun – and so,
I must be further checked

When spirits queue –
like Joan's Patrick, like Helen must,
just three weeks before, one night apart –
to board Charon's white new catamaran,
are they scanned
for some last morsel of life,
stealthed in a corner,
in the creased glint of a frozen eye?
Must they give it up,
every last twist, last sinuous strain,
before they embark,
heads searching through the window,
before they embolden
on the Styxian sea?