Holy Island, December 1995

Your frozen slopes blushed in the dying light
As a sea of glass encased your ancient shores.
Weird landscape, other-worldly, whose draughty priory
Once housed men, their ascetic life belying
The beauty of their works: your enigma is,
They say, mastered now by cars and coffee shops.
But, as I turned to look into the
Cold-numbed face of the one I loved,
I knew that mystery remains, ever immutable,
Unconquered.