The Absence of You

I take a walk on the Seine

Cross Pont Neuf on my way to St. Germain

Love-hearts on padlocks on wire in the mist

Where young lovers kiss and swear to be true

Echoes of ten thousand sighs of love

And yet I feel only the absence of you

Out of a window on the thirtieth floor

Central Park shines with the coming of dawn

Through eyes rendered weary by jetlag and wine

I turn 'round to find, there's a girl in my room

For a moment we kiss but her vodka-soaked lips

Taste only of the absence of you

I don't know

What all of this means

If you are not here with me

And I am lost

When we are apart

There's a hole in my heart

That light passes through

And the pattern it creates

Is the shape of the absence of you

Spring has been found hanging 'round Soho Square

So I'll take my coffee and newspaper there

To bask in the not-warm-enough April sun

With the workers who come to eat Pret with no shoes

But the grass to the side of the patch where I'm lying

Is flat with the absence of you

I don't know

What all this is for

If you are not near to me

And I can't sleep

Sleep is no fun when the unruly sun

Will reveal the truth

A space in my bed as cold as the dead

Exactly the size and the shape of the absence of you

And all of this beauty runs over and through me

And pools 'round my shoes

And the puddle it forms

Conforms to the shape of

The absence of you