No Englishman would be seen dead under one, preferring to run for cover, soaked to the skin, peruke bedraggled, than carry this effeminate device, the ‘Frenchies’ unfurled without a blush. Only Mr Jonas Hanway, by no means wet, having seen off Persian pirates on his travels and an outspoken critic of tea drinking and employment
Hong Kong A fan on the ceiling. The parlour full of drapes and towels. A pianist plays behind the curtain. They call him Liverpool. The cat mooches. The woman puts her hands together in salutation. A man on the chair, legs stretched out. The woman kneads his feet. The boss takes the money. Sometimes yawning,
Hoi An I rock in my hammock much of the day.Scooters shoot by like dragonflies.Diesel aromas. Up in the tree they’re cutting down coconuts.The wife’s pulling noodles.Small fires in the paddy fields. The frogs are rehearsing.They’re performing Uncle Ho’s frog opera later this evening.Yellow tree viper slithers by. I dream of Lord Nandi – the
Good morning. Perhaps before I am old, wandering on the face of the world, lost, you could suggest an open place of grass and curious trees where I walk barefoot as the day cools under a massive sky, with a herd of something I can’t quite see moving slowly over there on my right, the
He keeps the why his black crows fly, the where his dark nights go, the how he’ll play with stooks of hay the impresario, up threadbare sleeves with twigs, dry leaves, ragwort that on warm days seeds potholed tar cats’ eyes ill-star for winter’s matinées. Flat cap cock-eyed, stick arms flung wide, bowed to the
Holding the glorious heap of her black hair away from her head for the heat, the tall, young, I’m guessing Italian woman swivels her slender torso with such a sweet nonchalance that the no less glorious clump at her armpit is rendered unignorable. Degas might have done a sketch then and there, and Hardy was
for Chris Spedding When most eyes still linger on the singer, he’s picked out of the shadows into a cone of light. No other way would he have it: More silver quiff than white, thank you, more Cochran, Vincent, defo more Elvis! Like a thing dug out of a plumber’s sack his brass slide
I think my earliest memory,pulling the tablecloth and tea-pot almost down on top of me, a sudden swirling in my eyes,a scattering of residues,enough to make that moment freeze the summer in our garden, musthave been when consciousness at lastpermitted time to be released. Perhaps those dregs then helped to feeda bloom still holding up
The decision, now my mother’s off her feet, off her food but not, thank god, her rocker, is for a rota of nephews and nieces to drop in and keep an eye on her so she’s not alone. Unshod gypsy horses cropping the grass of a traffic island in autumn’s last-blown leaves (from
Just to say there was one small deer standing alone in a dry field. We’ve passed it now.
Blue air and unpredicted sun The damp grass drying at last Let all the Chernobyls of our near past The video missiles and the lasered gun Come down on us, we will be found Still here, as shadows stencilled on the ground Burnt outlines of a single hour When we enjoyed ourselves; though burn we
I used to think some people were beyond your sphere Of influence and lived in a partitioned world. Silly of me. No one is beyond the sun’s light – How could they be? And we all drink water And breathe the same air and use the same tired words. I used to think some people
I love the birds, I love the way they chat all through the evening shift. My daughter, too, loves the birds. I am a bird she says to us, and talks the way the birdsong does: as if it were important not to ever halt the melody which sows its end back to its start.
This moon that circles us has greyer barkthan other moons that orbit in the dark. Were its surface a whiter shade, the glowmight wake the forests sleeping down below, would be a floodlight at the windowpaneof lovers argumentative again: the ones like us who, restless in the night,might stand and yawn before its harbor light.
(22 November 1915) Four bombardiers were on their wayTo a small village in the rearLayers of dust had turned them greyThey’d joined up earlier that year They quietly spoke of other yearsAnd gazed at the vast plain aheadA shell coughed near the bombardiersNot one so much as turned his head Their talk was all of
I’m pretty sure that death will wipe me out, though some cosmic way I don’t yet know about may have a different say. The only thing I sometimes think about are the times that go when my own time runs out, how nobody will know the reckless things my grandmother would say when no one
My brother in the evenings, long after his death, would take a corner seat and sigh under his breath. Yes, sigh, and mutter things that I could almost hear. Then, like a painted house, he faded over years until his image and his whisper both were one. There was a final dream, when this small
i.m. Ian Jack (1945-2022) I feel awkward owning up to it, Ian, but I find I’m skimming the news pages. To bask in the light, listen to music, watch geese fly over and tulips glow doesn’t feel as if I’m selling my soul. Not that I skip the bullet points – bombs falling, democracies failing,
(after Saint-Amant) Mastered by laziness and melancholy,I dream in bed like a boneless hare en croûtestewing in its own juice, a delicate brute,or like old Don Quixote in his holy rage. I don’t care a hoot for the latest cause,the count palatine and his royal descent,but consecrate a hymn to the indolentmood in which my
A man walks the black soil of a reaped field. He pauses to kneel and parse the earth for old coins or unearthed aluminium. He is twenty-two. He is fifty-eight. He’s not a man but a child with a dog. He’s my boss. He’s a gamekeeper, he’s a bailiff at my door. Three buzzards form