IN ILLO TEMPORE

IN ILLO TEMPORE

I dreamed a courtyard of rose-red stone, hung with flowers, filled with sun. And as we stepped into the ancient house, I took you by the hand, and you delighted in the place: here is where we live, you said.

Birds stumbled through the liquid leaves, scattering their song across the sky, and all through the summer dim, we wandered the courtyards of Scotland, until the sky paled to opal and summer filled the morning up.

More than a returning, this, more than reconciliation. Across this border now, in my once-remembered country, the ancient stones turn red and warm, glow like honey in the perfumed night - and I know you again, find you at last, in an endless turning to the light.

Outside the courtyard, beyond the stones, beyond the mornings and the hooded nights, outside of then or now or soon, or here or there or other where, I will always take your hand, beneath the roses and the singing sun.

Ningbo, China, 23-24 May 1989


Dreams of wholeness, of integration, of union: what is it that fills the spaces between the stars, or binds the quantum strangeness of particles? Is love the dark matter that holds the universe together?

I woke that first morning in Ningbo, knowing that I had been given a great gift, and the poem I began was only a reflection of something larger: the next day's dream completed the story, but I'm still unable to say it any other way. I didn't see it then as a love poem, though it can be so read. For twenty years I had lived in Scotland and my waking hours had been largely spent reading Chinese and reading about China, but China never came into my dreams. When at last I arrived in Hangzhou, I dreamed - as you'd expect - about Scotland, but this was the first sign the two could be integrated.

Why am I dreaming about that time in my life?