Five of them dressed in black from head to foot. We do it in a circle, partly for the children, partly because we’re teaching the English words for arms, legs etc. Wednesday morning in St Stephen’s church hall. The children have already done heads, shoulders, knees and toes knees and toes. The ladies from Afghanistan
May there always be a friend to write a letter — always time for silence between bars of music — always more stories, more music — always a flock of birds over the river — always old maps promising new journeys — always an island at which to moor and
With all the rain our great provider wished upon us this long winter, a brick-lined pit dug umpteen years ago (I had no inkling it was there), fell in. More than six foot wide, more than eight foot down. The shock. The fear of falling into piss, shit, bone-eating worms. My need to
I close my eyes and sing her name, shape her ghost on the air. The trees are begging for Spring. One lane haunts another in Wales. This hedge lets in a saline wind though it’s been fifty years inland. The river’s genie snags on a thorn on its way to the sea, vague summers
Beneath you is the swollen city, markets and the plenaries of feral cats, their siestas under siege from cops with eyeshades up and windows down tooling around in old Buicks. There’s a whiff of stock footage about it – sex on the breath of my first lover from the interior. After light rain, elms take
The trouble was it overwhelmed the land, The glistening waters gobbled everything, Not drowned, but living, everything: the grand, The not-so-grand, all thriving in the swing Of tails writhing, eager to be free, Each to its own expression and distinct, But indistinct; so many flapping, we Could only feel the force of them, all
So much steam and shafts of sooty light. The porters look like Laurel and Hardy and I like the train driver’s leathery smell, the glow of hot coals, the crowded platforms. Our mums and dads are on the move, escaping wars, seeking lost weekends, travelling somewhere sad along with the dead. When I blink whole
Earth’s moon is never new, There’s no replacing her. Either you see all her wintered face Or she sends scraps Through bandages of shade. She doesn’t want your talk Assuaging, failing to assuage, Only your sleepless eyes As she gropes her way Across the cobbled stars, Clutches at sun To heal her
He’s riding a white horse. I was going to say he was riding into the forest. It’s more like a wood, a large wood with sycamore trees and silver birch and if you look you can see a Weeping Willow. There are deer in the undergrowth watching carefully and there are a lot of small
Or when their arms their legs their hands their clumps of feet entangled and she asks which of them belong to her and he murmurs Be patient.
She appears in the window. She appears to be watering the plant. I need to be in your hair he whispers into her ear. His tongue drains the room of light pitched with the fever of is there someone else is there is there In his voice she can hear a leaf loosening from its
(after Mallarmé) The smoke rings I cannot blow seem summations of my soul one by one by one they roll scattered with another O their trembling grey bears witness to incendiary art keep your ashen mind apart from the buried fire’s red kiss thus whole choirs of romance fly up to lips
He’s got an old truck in the driveway, Hot cup of coffee in his hands, A way of life he’s known since his childhood, First rays of the morning sun Breaking through the clouds He plans his day in the farm He knows he’s gotta give his best ’Cos all he’s got is in
Just grant me one summer, powerful fates, and a final autumn of lucid song, so that, sated with music’s sweetness, this soul may wholeheartedly die. A poet not wielding his sacred might in life shall find no quiet in Orcus, yet once I have said the holy words I came to say, spoken my
The cab suddenly turning up twenty-seven minutes later after my ten frantic calls from the pavement outside your block, your dressing-gowned silhouette hovering on the balcony, a halo of your wispy hair blonde once more against the dawn. My suitcases thrown in the boot, doors slammed, engine revved, clutch released, I forgot our goodbye
Remember those lanes he walked after work, past the weed-wormed car park at the rusting colliery to the two-street village, to catch the bookies or straight into the Oak. His days governed by dim light: in boiler houses or the single bulb rooms of boarded-up terraces – jobs no one wanted never fazed him.
for Ian Sansom Where was it written that I should measure my middle years by the great blank flowering of these pom-poms – uncanny as domes in a village landscape – whose advance has no warning (one day a sprinkling of warts, the next WE’RE HERE!!!), that love water and pacify the night? They’ve
I send you this bouquet, which my own hands just culled from the marvellous bed; if spring’s not gathered tonight, I said, tomorrow her beauty will have flown. Let its light serve as a sermon then, how your charms flourishing their fair May shall soon be invested with frost-grey and, bit by bit, become
Firm pillows stacked high for hope to rest on, each calling out against nightmare and fear. Courage has determined this towering resistance so may it hold firm and remain until dawn for the light to discover a mended nation whose cities awake from their troubled sleep.
Let me be baroque in death as I’ve been practical in life. Let six black-plumed stallions draw the black-gloss carriage wherein my black-gloss casket rests upon a maple plinth festooned with lilies – outrageously frilled and huge white lilies exploding from every crevice, their syrupy musk clagging the air for miles around. Let us halt