When, after this long time together, I’m standing waiting for you in a square,
and knowing you’ll contrive to turn up late,
preferring me to be there first, preferring not to wait alone
and I not minding, I quite liking letting slip
these minutes of my life, now here, now gone,
because, I hope, I have so much of it to spare:
the waiting brings a quickening of heartbeat
for the moment when we’ll meet as in the early days,
when I would fix my gaze upon you, coming through the crowd,
an almost stranger in a public place,
looking about you, searching for me; then your recognising face.