Fate Playing

Because the message somehow met a goblin
Because precedents tripped your expectations
Because your London was still a kaleidoscope
Of names and places any jolt could scramble,
You waited mistaken. The bus from the North
Came in and emptied and I was not on it.
No matter how much you insisted,
And begged the driver, probably with tears,
To produce me or to remember seeing me
Just miss getting on. I wasn't on it.
Eight in the evening and I was lost and at large
Somewhere in England. You restrained
Your confident inspiration
And did not dash out into the traffic
Milling around Victoria, utterly certain
Of bumping into me where I would have to be walking.
I was not walking anywhere. I was sitting
Unperturbed, in my seat on the train
Rocking towards King's Cross. Somebody,
Calmer than you, had a suggestion. So,
When I got off the train, expecting to find you
Somewhere down at the root of the platform,
I saw that surge and agitation, a figure
Breasting the flow of released passengers,
Then your molten face, your molten eyes,
And your exclamations, your flinging arms,
Your scattering tears
As if I had come back from the dead
Against every possibility, against
Every negative but your own prayer
To your own God. There I knew what it was
To be a miracle. And behind you
Your jolly taxi-driver, laughing, like a small god,
To see an American girl being so American,
And to see your frenzied chariot ride-
Sobbing and goading him, and pleading him
To make happen what you needed to happen-
Succeed so completely, thanks to him.
Well, it was a wonder
That my train wasn't earlier, even much earlier,
That it pulled up, late, the very moment
You irrupted onto the platform. It was
Natural and miraculous and an omen
Confirming everything
You wanted confirmed. So your huge despair,
Your cross London panic dash
And now your triumph, splashed over me
Like love forty-nine times magnified,
Like the first thunder cloudburst engulfing
The drought in August
When the whole cracked earth seems to quake
And every leaf trembles
And everything holds up its arms weeping.

Ted Hughes.