THE TOUR GUIDE

Today in medieval manor,
                          do you remember me I wonder?

Do my eyes call
                          from portraits on the wall?

Then when they swap the pictures round
                          does my gaze go to ground,

or do you see me anyway
                          in the memory of that April day?



And does my voice fill your head
                          with every single word I said

echoing around the panelling
                          old carved oak now channeling

these restless thoughts and forbidden dreams
                          that inspire in you impossible schemes?

Oh through those sunlit stained glass windows,
                          feel my impassioned caress in rainbows!



You're leading yet another tour -
                          all new faces, never a bore.

But can so much as a single one
                          ignite your slumbering inner sun?

Oh please let it be the flitting image
                          of my face that incites such rage -

like mine - of ravenous core-heat
                          and maddest wildest heartbeat.



Home alone now my thoughts roam free,
                          nothing but the TV for company.

Somerset countryside on the screen,
                          a part of the county I've never been.

Amid those rolling hills of green
                          flash of retro-vision seen:

this, I recall, is your home shire -
                          and it sets imagination on fire.



When gazing from your highest window
                          to Glastonbury Tor where the west winds blow,

does it bring to mind green eyes
                          and stirrings you're afraid to recognise?

Then attempting to drown forbidden needs,
                          do you turn to your collection of foreign meads

and gulp them down in haste -
                          but my perfume's in the after-taste?



Oh am I just a deluded fool
                          to hope you also felt it all?

When our eyes met
                          over that faded Gazette

and you stealthily breached Pandora's Box
                          with the dusky reclining nude on top

just for me...
                          God, how you set my fantasies free!



Even today it still tortures me,
                          this knowing what can never be.