EDWIN Morgan's lines are a powerful testimony to the redemptive, restorative, power of love.

The piece is included in his Collective Poems (Carcanet, £14.95).

THE WELCOME

When love comes late, but fated,

the very ground seems on fire with tongues of running time,

and conscious hearts are speaking

of the long vistas closed in clouds

by lonely waters, all goodbyes

where the swallow is a shadow

swooping back, like youth, to silence.

If all goodbyes could be drowned in one welcome,

and the pain of waiting be washed from a hundred street-corners,

and dry rebuffs and grey regrets, backs marching into rain

slip like a film from the soiled spirit made new -

I'd take that late gift, and those tongues

of fire would burn out in our

thankful fountains, to the sea.