This poem encompasses the life cycle of a passionate—but ultimately failed—relationship.
In the first two stanzas, the love between the couple is carefree and bursting at the seams:
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop . . .
The repetition of the first and fourth lines of each stanza symbolizes the loop that the couple finds themselves in throughout the relationship. While they at first find themselves so connected and caught up in their own togetherness that "time was away and somewhere else" and "they were neither up nor down," by the third and fourth stanza, it appears that their togetherness holds a different meaning than it once did:
The...
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camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates . . .
In these stanzas, the tone of the language shifts in a way that suggests that their oasis of togetherness is now an empty, desolate, and vast desert in which the couple are on opposite sides. Instead of being "two people with one pulse," they need to "portion the stars and dates" like it's a chore.
The fifth and sixth stanzas revisit time that "was away and somewhere else," but this time, nothing happens easily. The music that flows fiercely in the first stanza now "came out like water from a rock." This almost seems like more of a reminiscence than a moment the two are living in.
The phrase "Her fingers flicked away the ash" suggests that the fire that had once fueled their love has now burned out; the woman seems to have disconnected herself from the smoldering remains of their relationship.
In the seventh and eighth stanzas, we see the woman on her own, praising "that time can stop like this" and that she has been able to remove herself from a loop of time that had become toxic for her:
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.
In the end, she no longer lives in an alternate reality and is instead choosing to be present in life.
References
The poem conveys the sensation of time standing still when two people are in love. As the two lovers meet in the cafe, it's as if the whole world has stopped moving. All the hustle and bustle of the world—the ceaseless activity, the movements of the stock market, the ticking of the clock—none of it seems to matter. This is how it feels when people are in love: when they share one pulse, two hearts beating as one.
Yet at the same time, there's a sense of desolation in the air which undercuts the romantic quality of this relationship. References to a desert heighten the lovers' isolation. In giving themselves so completely to each other, they have become alienated from the world around them. This is the downside of such a passionately intense relationship. And yet, for now, the loss of the world (of people, places, time, and events) is, for the speaker, more than adequately compensated for by the luminous presence of his lover who seems to make the room glow.
References
“Meeting Point” is a love poem about intimacy and distance. For about half the poem, we observe a scene in which two people in a café share a tender moment, oblivious to the outside world: “Time was away and somewhere else.” The situation the poem is sketching comes into view with the lines “Her fingers flicked away the ash” and is confirmed in the last stanza with “Time was away and she was there."
With that, we understand that we are reading about a couple. One possible interpretation is that “she” is most likely gone, no longer there. The poem builds the intimacy and captures the moment by contrasting the specific location of the couple with distant and vast scenes, silenced sounds, and important events.
We see a stream flowing through heather, camels crossing a desert, and tropical trees in a forest. We do not hear the bell, because it is “silent in midair.” Even the stock market crash would not affect these two characters. Yet there is a sense of desolation that detracts from the intimacy they share: “the desert was their own.”
In the last two stanzas, the narrator seems to be freezing the moment and associating it with a past closeness that is no more.
God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this . . .
The impression is that the narrator is remembering one poignant scene that is no longer. Perhaps the occasion was when she broke up with him—anticipated by the earlier mention of “ash.”
Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was . . .
References
God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good. (Louis MacNeice)
The theme of this lyric in rhymed (ababa) iambic tetrameter poem in five-line stanzas is the happy bliss that occurs when two lovers meet at any place in any condition and experience the time-stopping transfixation of total absorption and adoration of the other in a full submersion of their presence. In this poem, the setting is a cafe where both are smoking. It doesn't matter where or when or what the activity, time stops for lovers.