Once

BY Carol Anne Duffy

And I adored you.

So in those hours
when the sun once
rolled out a silver walkway on the sea,
when the orchard once
opened its woody fists
to juggle blossom over our heads,
or I once knelt
to steal the rain
from your hands —
which remorse,
as we weep it now,
might remind us of —

once was enough.