Forbidden love

Lyrics & Music: Coenie de Villiers © 2016 SAMRO

 

There’s a faded rug upon the floor

And a painting in a frame:

It’s the one you did of Tuscany

The year before I came;

There’s a box of stars upon the shelf

From a Christmas long ago

And photographs of people,

And of places I don’t know

 

We have endless Tuesday mornings

Filled with cups of milky tea

Talking softly of what might have been;

how to love when you are free

Your shelf is stacked with candles,

filled with Yeats and Kerouac

and a hundred borrowed paperbacks

that you really should give back

 

The uniform invites the war

The lighthouse calls the storm

Be quiet: perhaps if no-one knows

We might be safe, and warm;

Turn the pictures to the wall

Close the shutters in the hall

If there is no story, if there is no past

This love might even last …

 

You told me without irony

That in a forest on the hill

There lives a lonely unicorn,

That you can see him still

when the light falls at an angle,

when the stars are not too bright –

when I suspend my disbelief

and the moon reflects just right

 

Will this dervish of desire

Burn with a cooler flame?

Do the embers ever turn to ash,

does this fire have a name?

While floating in the furnace,

as we catch the eye of God;

I wonder, would He disapprove,

would He simply smile, and nod?

 

The uniform invites the war

The lighthouse calls the storm

Be quiet: perhaps if no-one knows

We might be safe, and warm;

Turn the pictures to the wall

Close the shutters in the hall

If there is no story, if there is no past

This love might even last …

 

When eventually the clouds burn off,

when at last the weather clears;

When we can name the demons,

when we can face the fears;

We’ll ignore the footsteps on the stairs

that pause outside our door;

We’ll take a walk, and talk and laugh

At the fear we knew before

 

The uniform invites the war

The lighthouse calls the storm

Be quiet:  perhaps if no-one knows

We might be safe, and warm;

Turn the pictures to the wall

Close the shutters in the hall

If there is no story, if there is no past

This love might even last …