I rode a bike at speed with letters and cheques, tickets and fines, the dying art of pen. I carried the word of commerce and law, money and verse. A mad dash thick with smog, deadly with car. I rode at metal and juggernaut bus, the copper with a truncheon, prodding. Then a rest on
I think writing poems is about tracking downWho you are when completely alone.Not being assessed by anyone, Not answering to anyone. It’s about the part of you that doesn’t belong,The One who has no place in the World,The One with a foothold in Eternity. The One who cannot be foundIn the files of a single
Meanwhile, a man leaves his bed to comfort a child who has had a bad dream. Look, he says, carrying her to the window – nearly morning. Shall we go downstairs? One-handed, fills the kettle, flips it on, his daughter pressed against his shoulder, warm. Breakfast, clothes, brush teeth and hair, a ride to nursery,
Half-truths present themselves complete as memories write fainter. Keep this in mind: that’s when we meet the mind whose grasp is greater, retouching like a painter the smudges all the world can see, the freedom in our data, our mind too data-free. Well-being gleams along its scale. We barter for our ration, too late, too
for Zoya (b. 1926) The past is an undigested meal. Small things trap us, she says. How a girl can pop out to search for bread and be gone for twelve years. That washing dead bodies becomes routine. Dreams come thicker now, like smoke from the transport train to Nazi Germany – rib-cage to rib-cage
She says, well you look great now you’ve lost so much weight, looking up the Lower Clapton Road where a black zigzag of a ravine stretches from the chemist on the corner to the doner where they sell rum baba, and she adds, you could even wear shorts, while my bra strap bites into the
I emptied my drawers and cleared the flat. I sleep on an inch-thick mat. Want this. Want that. Not any more. I dream in black and white. Colour distracts me. You only need to own three T-shirts, exactly. I dream in light. Throw your books in the dirt and light
Here’s dominion, and the reek of borders. This is my walk alone behind the guard on the high, snow-bound edges of Iran, the roads mud rivers thundering down drains. In the hot offices of Manila an unsmiling clerk from the Department of Immigration and Deportation takes my passport. I am lifting my face to a
The streets looked foreign and the night was short And pointed to a situation tense, But how else can experience be thought When there is nothing else you could report Than empty boulevards where lights condense Where streets looked foreign and the night was short, When everything looked futile, nothing taught You that your driving
We bought it down the car boot sale, not much of a risk for three quid. While I was paying the mother, the teenage daughter ran her thumb over the screen a final time. We’re back today with stuff to sell, David more than two feet taller. It’s been pitched at three quid again. Every
Parkinson’s My left arm, apt and agile, has the knack Of swinging with a youthful nonchalance. My right is stiff. My right hand shrinks and claws, Reluctant to lift cups or open doors. It’s the deft fingers of my left that dance Over the keyboard, while the right hangs back. My left side’s young, my
(for Sonia and Michelle, the gauche mystique) Liberty guides us on the narrow path her ponytail a torch for the groaning peoples. Someone has dropped a bead of pomegranate, I imagined Kore rapt in the act of eating in this shaded place of wild asparagus, the surface fissured where she was taken under. For a
So much steam and shaftsof sooty light. The porterslook like Laurel and Hardyand I like the train driver’sleathery smell, the glowof hot coals, the crowdedplatforms. Our mumsand dads are on the move,escaping wars, seekinglost weekends, travellingsomewhere sad alongwith the dead. WhenI blink whole epochsare shunted off. Onthe holiday specialwhere I once satthere’s a dazed, aged
Sometimes nothing would do but the jug band from the swamp stomping the dirt road down the bayou grunting bass and wailing mouth-harp chain-gang holler and low moon riding the cypress trees hauling along that long-time sorrow crying out in that strange joy sometimes nothing else could hope to bring it home
I wanted to be a writer, but instead of sitting down I strode out over the shingle ridge and saw the sun coming up pink, pushing the thick clouds away, and felt the cold wind forcing the morning’s door, hurrying everything along, even the tiniest stones, which rained down in little landslides no bigger than
Life begins, everlastingly, with light.A cloud-green chaos, the creator’s tear,that crystal deluge breaks to disappear.Rich oil, soft ochre-black, becomes a heightof stone, to pierce, amid the wilderness,our Virgin Mother’s deep azure and gold.Her fingers, hesitant as blood, unfoldto bless the child above the last abyss. Land’s End. Nanjizal Bay at low tide formeda cratered Armageddon
The geometric universe reels beside the motorway – this Lammas night, a measure on the harvest sway of ears, a murmured song, a lullaby from spheres of leaf-green light, breathes circles, petals, stars, makes rough bristles collapse suddenly as one, and, while the lorries pass, the pattern’s spun.
Time, Butcher’s Van, that I began To hymn you panegyrically! When at your wheels the gravel pinged And tingled, no van, were it winged, Could have arrived more lyrically! We marked the man vacate you, Van, To hob and nob satirically With maid and cook, produce the book To sign as
Slowly the slow train pulls away To run beside the river bed With everything I long to say To people who are long since dead.
A response to Larkin’s poem ‘The Old Fools’ No, Philip, they’re not fools they’re just old, the world over mind-boggling millions of them the lot who are always losing things — sometimes not only things — the stooped battalions for whom bladders and stairs are now an issue along with banks without cashiers, opening tins