(i.m. Marie Colvin, 1956-2012) All autumn, the chafe and jar of nuclear war — Robert Lowell, ‘Fall 1961’ My father, who’d had ‘about as much as he could take’ by ’44, and still woke swearing at flies and soaked in sweat, read the Telegraph in dread and disbelief over his
Our honeymoon weaved from Hampton Court to the pavement labyrinth of Chartres, then on to the high hedged puzzle of the Villa Pisani, where he delighted in my wrong-footed confusion. All the while his notebook overflowing with looped alleys, abrupt dead ends, sly, coiling traps. Back home I soon came to feel the practice of
Muscle patterns that show satisfaction or delight as opposed to a disingenuous smirk have been identified by the Laboratory of Human Interaction to provide more information about suicidal patients who want to check themselves out of hospital in order to take their own lives. The best test for a genuine smile is to look
The heatwaves that would have filled my tubs and cones never came. ‘O sole mio’ falling flat as I drove through my hard fought for patch on the outskirts of Aldershot. The Whitby Morrison will have to go, it won’t fetch much, mouths to feed, another on the way and barely enough to stretch to
From The Years (Arc Publications, £8) I came to tend – I lie – to visit the grave of a friend and found an ugly shrub with waxy leaves had made the plot its home. Since my last attendance ten years had passed – doing I can’t think what, except translate a
The place was out beyond an old farmhouse, a path through woods, a clearing, sky; the others gathered close, bounded by what each of us withstood. The limestone scree tumbled down the hillside intermittently, clouds covered the sun. I shook the crushed femur and fibula of peppered ashes, watched them weightless glide like spores, and
Like regrets drifting through consciousness, They glide through the streets of our cities, Untouchably themselves, Silently intent on their purpose, Counting eternities with each corner they turn. Belonging to no time or place, They appear in our hearts, Offering up the flowers we never sent And the words we never spoke, Only to disappear once
In the park today, All that I found had a name. The black ball of a robin’s eye, The dizzy dart and dawdle of the sky blue butterfly Were almost just the same, But I had their song In my hands and lips, Like the grass I picked when it had been Rolled and
In its translation, this poem does not rhyme, Nor do its lines possess much of a metre, And yet its lilt has something of the chatter To be heard around the overpriced café Where its translator likes to spend his time Discoursing to the waitress on the way He matches sentiment to syllable To convey
Regent’s Park, November I pick a tree, from all those rows, ruggedly gesturing, voiceless, braced for the fall of shaming snows, a captive in its stark undress. At my feet the thousand-pieces puzzle in countless shades of brown attests to a handful of species whose leaves the recent winds brought down: English
The vanity of your insistence that there is still time remaining to speak what words can’t say on these most wishful of days when, for you, the dying part is near and still you want to believe the conversations will go on as you rest your hand like the hallucination of a hand on files
Often it disappears – from hotels, harbours, airport carousels… but always it comes back to him. Trusting in the umbilical dance of instrument and player he stays calm in its absence. Amongst the cosmic flotsam orbiting Earth this minute There! Tauseef’s harmonium. On the sea bed, flexing its gills for ghazal-hungry shoals
The year after my brother died, I was out on my threadbare Vespa in countryside south of Bradford. The day was warm and blue; I let myself get lost, turn by turn, until I rode solo along the lanes. Low, overhead of me, a plane flew with a single propeller, its undercarriage painted cloud-like: its
Our metaphor container ship is dry-docked in Bratislava and our simile warehouse in Wuppertal has had to close its doors. We apologise. Some figments, we believe, may still be in transit, but there are supply chain fractures due to disputes over paperwork. We’re so sorry that we couldn’t get the parts but the
The windows of the tight old houses bulge Across the fishhead cobble, a rope that moors The sea to a church with its back to the quay. The sky is stuck fast in the tower tabs. See now the worried wives, thronging and blocking, Peering and peering through swollen glass To watch the catch of
Inevitable autumn after the excesses of summer: the year has simply nothing more to do. But look: the falling of each single leaf is slow and indecisive, hesitant as if (like floating voters) they are not convinced this is a good way to go; the necessary ending of their short aerial adventure – even as
A squeeze-box performs outside: The tinny air is pumpingw Through its half-forgotten song Like a failing heart. The sacred relic’s displayed In its dull crystal and gold For visitors to inspect As they shuffle by. The priests sit behind it, bored. They are no more concerned than Customs officials might be,
Thinking on it now, it was like living at sea beneath the whaleback hills, in those blue acres of lavender. Our house was a barge, its chimneys sharing our dreams with the sky. The barns were islands we would swim to through the fields, beyond the shoreline of the lane. Here, we would laze and
Whit Sunday, blustery heat, and you in three-piece suit to read the Second Lesson. The day before, I’d excavated Arctic Rolls from ice-shelves in the local store’s deep freeze. We ate them reverently, like miracles we didn’t quite believe in. I threw up first and stayed in bed. You soldiered on through
One day, my fellow occupant of our cell, you’ll cease to follow in my steps, to tell me, looking through our single window, about whatever view you’ve chosen for the day. Somehow, absurdly, I’d foreseen collapse, my deserted body, our almost rhyming corpse, and that you might walk away jauntily singing to