Keep your distance – here be dragons Agues of all kinds blown in from the East Time to fear door-knobs, be wary of cheek-to-cheek Kiss nothing, stay Within the boundaries, do what they say Soon we won’t know ourselves, bolted Behind untouchable doors, masked Like smash-and-grab merchants or terrorists Or like surgeons Bent over
You were seven and hadn’t askedfor one in months, but the salt windhad whipped your energy away,before a piled-up plate of squidat our favourite place on the promhad left you sagging in your seat. Even as I threw you overa shoulder and braced for the trudgeto our house, my back was hintingat a future without
All the books stored above our heads, all the books there aren’t enough hours to read again, and still we hesitate to banish them complete. The second-hand life, charity shops, jumble sales, car boot fields: the slow long-term dance, temporary ownership, possession and loss. Charity shops can take anything unwanted, books and LPs, the unfashionable
After a note by Jules Laforgue The melancholy of Van Goyen’s pale autumn marines.Sad, eternal wind – life in monotone – boats loaded to tipping point, drowned banks where melancholic cattle, submerged to the knee, nose for grass – windmill struts emaciated against the hills –the little village of thatched cottages on stilts where we
Life has changed into a matterof keeping an eye on yourself. What stage are we at? Should you be holding onat all costs, to your sincerity? When you close your eyes and catch upwith a sort of accelerated film,moving you in the direction of a bad end,is that what’s heading your wayor something remembered,or the
He’d reached the wood scrubbed up and clean,still drinking as a late sun flaredon windows like acetyleneas if the dusk could be repaired,while further in, turned submarine,thick shrubs clung to a footpath wherehe passed out as the pills kicked in,a dead man in cheap summerwareamongst the crows that kept an eyeon all such things that
the volcano I’d christened Mont D’Espoir or Mount Despair ‘Crusoe in England’, Elizabeth Bishop The twin peaks of Mont D’Espoir and Mount Despairkeep changing places and are hard to tellapart, with their simple
Before I arrive, I begin to walk.Early morning. The steps above Rosairedamp earth held into place by iron pins,white beads of water on the harbour’s crane,a milk churn cooling on the farmyard stone.Where were we? Up over the island’s spine, smell of the pines on a hot dusty track,travelling as she did, turning her backcurled
I was raised in the sky. For playmates I chose magpies and sparrows. On the high-wire I learned the language of clouds, of wind, and the balance of all things being equal. It’s where I found my feet, toed the line, while the butterflies and rain gave uptheir applause. I followed in her footsteps,heard her
For once, I’ve written on the reverse where and whenthe photographs were taken, the biro showing through on your lapel and down my cheek. It’s about a yearsince we met, we’re there in black and white, smartly attired after the wedding of friends east along the river, now launchedinto their life together while you show
One more dream – and may it prove the last of its kind to haunt me –where with a split-reed squawkI join a marching bandtowards the graveyard. My bent backleans earthwards, and notesno longer rise to a perfect pitch. At least I keep in step. Soonwe shall play The Saints, my restless feetBojangling, the big
The little dictionary lies open at A for Applewhere it all begins. I want to turn the pages, but the vitrine is a border crossing; my ageing face, stamped on its glass and my papers way out of date. Moths have been at work along the faded pink of a rabbit’s ear. It’s swiveled to
On the hearth of the working fireplace, the flags dusted with ash, we leave mince pies and a bottle of beer that Father Christmas might feed his face and wet his whistle while he is here, refreshment before he has to dash, having deposited the mystery of wrapped packages a further time in his series
There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankera Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera. *Extempore limerick in conversation with Nicholas Farrell and Urs Gehriger for the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche. On the grounds of its spontaneity, it
The sun always grabs us by surprise its yolky wash on a pub wall the clumsy spill round the black legs of café tables. it rains so frequently it’s like the sea trying to climb out of its skin. The beach is a runnelled grey, an old man’s face in cardiac arrest. we have stopped
Dearest, I’d love to have your Tina to stay — what are aunts for? — but I’m not sure if it can be managed just now. I know you’d like her to have a change of scene after that business with her maths tutor (has he gone back to his family now, by the way?)
Was everybody scared? Mum was, certainly. Slip-clinging hold, respectability. World-lost, he didn’t care, Or didn’t cotton on. Inexplicably, He once broke out, performing memorably: Reckless, and with aplomb. Mistiming exquisite; Turning their stomachs; Master-class for me in how to flummox Guests: it was The Visit. Scented and Sunday-clad, – Teacups four-high, stacked,
Was our first date really a boxer’s funeral? You in pitch, me in black—all in all a noirish affair, how we felt so at home with those lump-faced men, the mourners wrapped in silk and onyx watches, their Stygian raincoats soaked. And did their tears heave a river, a torrent, down Amsterdam as the organ
I am thinking about you Annie now that you are no longer a few miles of motorway and a couple of roundabouts from us here. I am remembering the meals, the easy chat and coffee; farewell coats and hugs in a doorway; that holiday we shared in Brixham, the fear of the foot noise on
The trellis between her garden and her new neighbour’s garden is heavy with passion flower, honeysuckle and roses, so that only rare glimpses can be seen through it — a blue flower, a splash of grass, a dark cuff. She calls out politely to welcome him to the neighbourhood. Weeks later, she calls out to