One of the earliest poems I can remember writing, from my teens.
"Love can never die",
You said before you entered
And left me, empty
Averting your eyes
But I keep all your letters.
Sometimes their manner recalls your voice
Promising, apologising,
Struggling to explain the gap between
What you could conceive and
Recreate.
This paper yellows and curls
Yet while the flickering hand feeds the fire
In time,
These words are only cinders
But I have made a place for them
Peter Jukes 1978