My father has become an old Aegean King peering out anxiously, scanning the horizon full of foreboding. So I phone him before I leave to say I’m on my way. I use light words, ‘coming soon’, ‘around that time’, promising words that hover and play, allow him to drift in and out of sleep while
Women aren’t allowed in so we lurk on the threshold – wives, mothers, lovers waiting for our men to appear in their new changed selves. Prime among them comes the boy, trying on his new blue suit for next week’s prom. At once we recognise the occasion, know it’s not a suit he’s trying on
Some of us are not cut out to be happy. Our role is to suffer undramatically, quietly, at home, while the world goes by outside. We are the ones who pay for your daily joys. Our marriages fail; our health; our wealth; our prospects turn to dust. If we pluck up the courage to
Naming these things is the love-act – Patrick Kavanagh Brighton House and MerrendenRoslyn Villa by Milford House Arthur Cottages one at AnnanElmwood and St Leonards meet Charnwood and the Park View HouseMalvern is three down from Cedars Shakespeare nods down to MiltonLike Poplars on a Holly Bank Tennyson knows the Lindum HouseFern Bank and Carew
Their eye-stalks unfurl the way you turn socks right-side-out, the eye a surprise at the end, so to picture a snail dying — not pierced or gouged or caved in like a church, but dying of natural causes, its little foot crawling, brainless, hoping, like your blood, to one day feed a forest floor —
How many years since we ate here – nine, ten? We called it the smoky café before the ban, took the kids upstairs for pasta each time they stayed with us. Now they wake inside their lives, miles away, and we (who feared this place had shut) share pizza on our return: olives dotted over
If I were called in to construct a religion relief would figure prominently. Best of all the positive emotions: warmer than contentment, deeper than joy, intenser than ecstasy. Congregants would go to church in wincingly tight shoes which they could slip off once seated. The building would have toilets but their use would be forbidden
from 20 Days in Mariupol, directed by Mstyslav Chernov After the bomb burst the hospital, her wounds were incompatible with life, the life she should have had to include dancing and, when this is history, if not a piece of theatre, chasing her laughing toddler along the beach. Yet she had life to give. They
What I don’t like about being alive is that you have to keep doing things, when really I’d prefer to do nothing. But you have to do this and that every day – endless little tasks and chores repeated again and again just because you’re alive. What should I do now – clean the toilet?
Somalia breaks off relations in 1963 so hurried packing is the order of the day and there she is in black and white swishing down the years in a gauzy frock past hat boxes and tea chests while servants hammer down the lids. Mosquito nets predict a breeze. The camera leaks her fear and sweat.
Leckhampton chimney has fallen down’ – Ivor Gurney In fact, it’s still much as it was,if you can find it, and if the dogs(nobody walks the hill without one)will leave off for a moment jumpingto press their muddy scrawl on you. Out here, I’m protected, surelywith three jackets. I missed the bus,lost the path, then
In your lit eyes I see other candles, other flames. On the stiff white tablecloth I lay out my jokes like the contents of a handbag. Your laugh, as mine, sounds far away. But the scene — how close and familiar it all is! Uncountable sweetnesses, tragedies.
He hoards a rotation of them in a moated field. Flymos, like grounded UFOs, line the verges. Old Webbs and Greenworks are at grass. Hares are his sentinels, guarding the perimeter. He wears a duffle darkened with oil and mud and a hat that plays Test Match Special on Long Wave. For him,
Pull back the carpeton last year’s compost.Amid the richness:ratholes, a snakeskin;the fetid carcassof a wounded muntjac. We grow our foodbetween such influences.The body incorporateswhat the mind refuses, so there’s a hintof rat and snakein all of us. Our kindsoft hearts springfrom moist darknesses,the wasted ribcage. ‘Om’ is a sacred syllable in Hinduism, mystically considered to
(after Al Alvarez) Skirmishes, furtive scuffling in the gardens, furred burglaries. Unearthly wails of cats on heat. Behind the house, a strip of railway land where foxes drag their salvage from the street – the bramble-sheltered brood… Crows pick up the pieces, dropping scraps of bone that suddenly materialize on balconies, on patios and paths.
Well will wounded Wilko wieldhis bloody red/black axe –fingers fast on Fender.Watch him as he chops, attacks,his hearers hoarse ring rafters Weighty wordsmith’s word hoard wandersthrough the streets and down by jetties.Long his living lays will lingerin the wide world’s towns and cities So, for fearless friend and friendship,many moons and miles rememberedin the Great
Ironing is her favourite task. The rhythm and the steam transport her to an outer state more vivid than a dream – a place of creased and crumpled hills, a wet and heavy land through which a burning body moves, directed by her hand. Each stroke a stride, the rugged earth dissolves into a plain
Your phone still works. All I have to do is dial your old number and I’ll hear your voice sounding almost like yourself. Perhaps you are not feeling well? I am walking in a part of London unknown to me but for the fact you live here, and always have done – an alleyway I
Robin is dead no more shall sing nor ruffle his wing no more shall sing Robin is dead no more shall wait at the garden gate no more shall wait Robin is dead his soul has flown but whither gone oh wither gone Robin is dead and all my joy my sweet bonny boy and
My son, who’s never been allowed to tread on the scarce, yellowed lawns back in Spain, hesitantly takes a few steps in Priory Park, glances back, checks for approval, then breaks into a wild canter. And I, who played in our garden all summer long and who took it for granted, learn the amazement of