To A Woman I Have Never Met Poem by Richard George

We were two of the six degrees apart
at our colleges tête-bêche down a Bridge of Sighs.
The roulette wheel of my dream spun you a face
in a tendresse of aftermath.

In the rose-dawn of next sunset
I padded upstairs to your corridor
and cell and read your autograph
and a kiss in cipher crossing not my name.

You were a stranger.

In this field of alien rape there was no bridleway.
I was spying for regimes not recognised:
my retina was a thief,
my memory of the non-existent its accomplice.

I wandered home past November lit shop
windows, gazing in,
a moth sprung from its chrysalis

alone as awake