The gurgle of a tap becomes the street’s first song, a busker tuning up for crumbs of daylight. His mother’s shadow tiptoes in, bends to his ear, hers the white dressing gown, the light breeze on his cheek whispering ‘Jack… Jack… We have to get up early.’ ‘What’s a pearly?’ Beyond
A bad night for a scattering. The river’s mouth was full. Sucked in its draught the last of him seemed indissoluble. So once again she’d got things wrong. His vinegary grin acidulous with dentures gone, the snarl, the spite left in a glass of water by the sink where, magnified,
Her end of terrace up for sale I lift old photos off the wall, leave three sun-faded patches where no face looks down to judge or care which dresses, blouses, skirts I drop in bin bags for the hospice shop or, delicately cavalier, sort lipsticks, powders, underwear, chuck peep-toes, slingbacks then throw in high heels
The moon trails its glitter in the Thames. A Welsh Elvis sings If I Can Dream and the party begins. The old slip away to soft chairs, drink tea.
Grief itself gives no more license to a drunk than rain gives dust, emnity its spitting distance, trellising convolvulus. Skirting consecrated woodland drink now helps him loose the plot where her turnip heels, he fancies, drum, unhinged, against wet rot. Foxgloves make their sly exchanges, Queen Anne’s Lace waves its goodbyes, ivy wrestles Lords and
Prisoners of war and victims of hunger they reach for food through invisible bars. Their homeland a prison, they gather together wherever aid workers arrive in the street. Their empty bowls are upturned helmets held at arm’s length as if begging for peace. Victims of war and prisoners of hunger, either or both are a
These fierce red roses, blazing at summer’s end would be amazed to know they are expected to stand for something else. Their refusal speaks for itself.
We pause while he takes out the window from his shop. The fancy way he handles your likeness makes us stop; the way his violet glass reflects your better side, sharpening with sunlight the tongue in cheek you hide, until two yellow gloves release you from the glare, tip you out, conceal you up sleeves
for Arbel Oh God, yes, our birthdays – spinning to wave at us again like two children riding a too fast merry-go-round. There’s you… there’s me… blue dress… red shirt… And now we feel dizzy, standing here so long, spinning there so briefly. Our horses don’t look back. Their eyes are cold and pitiless but
We shall both have hats showing we are wonderful,And mine will be big and blue as the sky,And yours will be the same colour as the daybreak,And on the moment that we die,We shall hang them on the peg whose name is HeartacheAnd never for one moment stop to wonder whyWe both had hats showing
For D.M. Your morning caller on your corkscrew willow, herald-on-high, swaying on the tip-top branch, purveyor and articulator of the drear backyards and garages of the new-build housing estate, a mad planner’s rash, built spilling-out, in bricky flood over the salt marsh. Trilling exultant blackbird, who, when you buckle under baleful neighbourly pressure to
White walls and ceiling, white tiled floor, scarlet bookshelves filled with authors I can never reach, Yeats, Homer, Hardy and the rest. Yellow velvet sofa, bought online from Wayfair. Blue jar, red peonies. Broad window green with easy houseplants: monstera, ficus and anthurium. On my walls Matisse, Dufy, Pissarro. Luxe, calme, volupte… Nothing in my
We take photographs of snow falling, but all we capture is the aura of feelings, abstract and ill-defined, the sensations of snow, of falling, of tumbling and dreaming, obscurely. We glimpse childhood in fragments, gleaming, a memory of you standing in the doorway, glances, leaving, coat on, bags packed and ready for denial. The falling
To be original would be to take The path that brought us back past the first song, The greenness of the buds out there along Near branches in the Springtime as they wake Up Springtime in ourselves and the ache Of seasons since so that we long To know the freshness in ourselves as strong
We are all, you might say, waiting for those barbarians even though we lack particulars, even an approximate profile, mug-shot, card-index summation, press cutting. Nothing exists but the vague sense that it should, that our time is up, we have held on too long, making the same points, using the identical words to describe this
There should have been thunder, jagged brilliance of lightning across the city the night the Fulbright Scholar claimed the piece that briefly made the puzzle whole: a hulking Yorkshireman with a gift for words the equal of her own. But the only storm in Cambridge that night was psychic — life not always resembling myth
The sun and the moon and other wonderful objectsmy mind, rushing about, connectsare just there, they’re there, whatever I may think.Why am I here, red-faced, shouting at the sink? Perhaps the world is given only once. It’s certainly odd.How hard I pray for the absence of God!The child’s idea: when dead or asleep we floataround
What magic is this, to elucidate the stars? Dawn chorus erupts with a thousand yarns, a thousand memories, wishes and desires, an avian Arabian Nights furnished before us, loves, losses and the lyrical space between, adventures told with a spectacular orchestral score, imagine if we’d never heard any of this before, we’d be in awe,
The cherry trees all sang On the road to Deptford Strand – A million blossoms wild with hope for a day. And Marlowe blew a kiss, Then he gazed into his hand On the road to Deptford Strand. The lilacs sighed of love On the road to Deptford Strand – Of hours like worlds and
Winter, 2022 I Apartment blocks stand stiffly like Swiss cheese, Pale walls sliced through with holes that let them breathe. Elsewhere a single wall looks wafer thin. The water is unsafe, it breeds disease. The crunch of popping shells unnerves the skin. Faced with this daily diet , people seethe Remembering those laid in shallow