The matador scowled at the back of the bar, and sipped his beer. He wanted to stab the people who stared at him. His black tie, his black suit didn’t shield him from their eyes. He ordered testicles, his unique entitlement, and a carafe of deep red wine. He flung his right arm around, as
As soon as you stop and rest you see more hills ahead, Great chains of hills to some improbable horizon. Will it always be like this? you ask yourself. Don’t let the hills tower over you, Don’t let their shadows creep before mid-afternoon And when they come, savour the blue. Enjoy the flatness of the
My fiancé has coined a word for Saturday recuperation which describes what much of the world does to allay its tension. From schoolchildren to the orthodox this is a time to reboot, rest, restore and relax, but none of these words quite suit in the way his term translates, acknowledging the week’s angst which the
when you weren’t anyone. Days gone undercover. Days half-dead in half-light, days under the covers. Days hoping for a dawn that wouldn’t come, days nights and the sun a dull, faded thing seen through nights of curtains drawn through days of nothing but you, you being the last thing you’d want to think about, you
He was checked in under the name Immortality, Mr Immortality — but on the vanity were the little capsules of mouthwash and shampoo, a packet with needle and thread, and letters from his father, who was dead. (And books to write, and letters of instruction, to have read.) He’s a valued guest at the Clarion,
Of course the bride’s dog came to the wedding and was allotted a chair at the top table at which he sat with a gloomy expression and a chewed satin bow. The groom fed him morsels of pheasant — laughing rather theatrically when his finger was nipped and the blood dyed his table napkin a
Near the dogleg turn of the lane down to the ponies’ field, skulking in summer among cow parsley and meadow sweet, in winter with their streaked black corrugated walls laid bare, were the half-dozen Nissen huts my father refused to mention. A prisoner of war camp for Italian soldiers, my mother told me, but also
In reply to Ann Baer, aged 101, of Richmond-on-Thames. Your handwriting, so perfect for its style And firmness, made me feel that this must be A brilliant schoolgirl. Hence my knowing smile At your comparing of my maple tree With Tennyson’s. But further down the page, And seemingly in passing, you revealed The
How many times these days I say those words, Muttering them quietly under my breath Or petulantly as the telephone rings Or shocked at some reported piece of news Or simply as a constant formula For things that pass by daily, and are gone Into the nowhere that life seems to be Day after day,
To draw conclusions from the precise force Exerted by a handshake or a kiss Is to confuse a delta’s civilities With the ambiguous thunder of its source, And what the fingers or the lips endorse Could be misleading. It comes down to this: Emotions are such things as you might miss. The river is the
The soot sunk clouds have gone — to blacken someone else’s landscape. The tugging, ripping, girl-fight wind that stole the weekend’s peace has been abracadabra’d away as though life’s difficult days never even happened. Sometimes the stirred world stills. The trees refitted and re-greened appear overslept and drowsy. How long have you been sleeping? How
She was considered the cleverest girl in the school, and deservedly so, and as such started the lower sixth with no trepidation, so who could not feel for her when she stretched back in her chair, casually, in a lesson-break on an autumnal afternoon, remarking, ‘Live long and prosper… that was Horace, right?’ There was
As if a turtle you have laid your eggs in a bowl of sand. Unlike the turtle you sit next to your own heap overlong considering the wondrous thing you’ve done, the babies wrestling in the gritty dark. And all the while the land cools steadily, a small white light somewhere over the sea, over
There it is, the wren. Keep still. Breathe in. The tiny bird with stumpy tail has landed near the windowsill and moves from twig to stem as quietly as rain. Feathered and breathing, it matches its portrait on the copper farthings of my childhood sixty years ago but look away and it has gone again
This elfin child was taken into care, And maintenance devolved upon the State. His whimpering mother was inadequate, His father vanished into empty air. Life came unfurnished – nobody was there To dress his wounds and make the pain abate. It was too much to ask and far too late To find another mother anywhere.
The figure in the shadows stared at Eve And shook the beans inside the bag. ‘Believe Me, crops of serpentini beans achieve A growth of two feet, even more, no lie.’ Eve, flattered by him, looked and gave a sigh. He rattled them and said, ‘Give them a try…’ ‘Perhaps I could be tempted…’ Blushing
Figs, lemons, almonds and holidaymakers, the fronds of palms and those fierce plants whose sharp extrusions in place of leaves, so uncompromisingly rigid and pointed, could pierce the heart with a dagger thrust, like the imagined, feared loss of your only child, here in this arid, heated beauty nourished by varieties of liquidity, these green
A place to see the little things between the monuments and tombs. As in the chapel of St Gabriel, a pencil. Here they are, behind the obvious. Next to the chapter house, a cupboard with a bowl, four toilet rolls. How small things quietly wait, make us forgivable. Inside the vestry, just inside the door,
It hangs, a mobile in the stairwell, always in motion however slight. Each silver scale as it sparkles there a neighbourly lodestar guiding us home to where we shall meet for ever in friendship beyond the darkness of your loss. Nothing you made that did not shine, nothing you dreamed can leave us now. And