Carol Ann Duffy - Moments of Grace lyrics

I dream through a wordless, familiar place. The small boat of the day sails into morning, past the postman with his modest haul, the full trees which sound like the sea, leaving my hands free to remember. Moments of grace. Like this. Shaken by first love and kissing a wall. Of course. The dried ink on the palms then ran suddenly wet, a glistening blue name in each fist. I sit now in a kind of sly trance, hoping I will not feel me breathing too close across time. A face to the name. Gone. The chimes of mothers calling in children at dusk. Yes. It seems we live in those staggering years only to haunt them; the vanishing scents and colours of infinite hours like a melting balloon in earlier hands. The boredom since. Memory's caged bird won't fly. These days we are adjectives, nouns. In moments of grace we were verbs, the secret of poems, talented. A thin skin lies on the language. We stare deep in the eyes of strangers, look for the doing words. Now I smell you peeling an orange in the other room. Now I take off my watch, let a minute unravel in my hands, listen and look as I do so, and mild loss opens my lips like No. Pa**ing, you kiss the back of my neck. A blessing.