I arrived in Lhasa by train in freezing weather. From what I’d heard, my father would be there. Outside the gaping entrance all was dark,snow falling quietly like owls’ feathers. In the bustling concourse, doubling as a market, just as I’d feared, my errant father was nowhere to be seen. I knew he was dead
Plate scrapers, scrap tippers, throw down your cloths. Raise your ruined hands to the sky. Rise up from the saunas of sunken kitchens. Squeeze soap in the face of progress. Pick up your brushes and take to the streets. Leave the dishes piled high. Point your thumb at the Chef de Cuisine Leave the suds
The beach magician’s vanished, gone home. Now it’s my sleeping cousins’ turn to disappear. Out of the creaking depths of old deckchairs their teenage spirits rise, drift down to the shore. The mackerel are in. Helen’s in blue, Cat in her yellow dress. The harbour’s a pond, the moored boats nailed to their
by Anna Akhmatova Somehow we pulled off becoming apart, Snuffed out our awful hot light. Perennial enemy, it’s time you were taught how someone can love someone right. I’m willing. To me it’s all fun, I’m game: At night, the easeful Muse careers Down to me here, and in the morning Fame Trudges in, rattles
here come the billygoats down the track so heavily hung with dongs that dangle down in the dust and balls that swing from side to side to clonkerty bells that roll and toll on their necks the melody ripples into the stone pine fragrance cypress shadows the nannies plunging onward struggling big with milk so
I probed its crown with the tip of my tongue and it creaked like a bough a boy swings on. Then with the pincer of finger and thumb I plucked it from its loose bed like a bud and set it on this oak table now a desk. It was taller than I thought and
It might be a long, long time since I was christened Christopher And nicknamed Kit… but not so long ago As 1570, when was born my namesake, Who did his best to stage the Fireworks Show That nearly happened. Yet they blew their chance And came to grief, as which of us wouldn’t have
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.