For Barbara and Ian Skelton

So here we are, approaching midnight
and without choice. Whether or not
we merrily link arms to gather in a ring
the clock will count us out. Something

will seem unnameably different, a house
with the same furniture but none of us
quite as we were, unable to define
the exact moment when what passed for time

has practised its deception. We shall arrive
where we suppose we have always lived
like walking through a mirror, and the dead
will be with us like children who have run ahead

and waited for us, laughing impatiently
at our small measure, at the memory
of home when life was all they knew
and they loved us, as we must love them now.

So this midnight nothing will be different
that is not so already. However we count
the chimes, they are counting us. Even a poem
takes time to be written, spoken,

and is a slight thing. What endures
is innocent of seconds, minutes, hours
or even centuries. It is transcendent grace
though for a while it wears a human face.

· From Counting The Chimes: New & Selected Poems 1975 - 2003 by John Mole, published by Peterloo Poets.