i.m. Mick Imlah There is a brief respitewhile our lives are held suspended.We’ll laugh when this is over,wiser for this glimpse of the abyss. For now, we go to work as usual,a zigzag route through the estates,our own private shortcut,till they close the gates at night. We leave behind the Florence, the Alhambra,their dreams of
Seth, Seth, the servile serf Earned his cruste by plowing earthe. Thick filthe lay on his every limbe. The stynke of Seth was foule and grimme. When summer came with azure skye And barleycorne was ripe and drye, Seth leapt at dawne, uncleane from bedde, To shake the dandruffe from his hedde. He scythed ’til
Ancaiano At the end of Augustthe moon fixed itself in the skyas if a pope were about to die. It got into the olive trees.It got into the porcupine.It got into the stone. Into the guts. Held its position till morning.Owl-tremour, dog-bark, cock-crow.My window my lover. The blue had goneand the house was washed in
Beeston Castle, English Heritage event, 2023/1265 The castle is perched on a rocky sandstone cragabove a moat of weeds and shadow-fields of flint:a subterranean memory-bank of history and hurt. A banquet of burdock and wild boar is being servedto the fingertip-march of a minstrel’s plucked lute —though I am stationed in the silt-flushed basin below.
Past time, maintains the broken clock. It isn’t off, not by a minute. Without a tick, without a tock, Past time, maintains the broken clock. Twice every day, those still hands mock the present, but they’re never in it. Past time, maintains the broken clock, It isn’t off, not by a minute.
The same window sticks. I push hard and sometimes it gives, lets in a distant sea, a child’s laughter in the waves. Mostly I can’t decipher the songs on the locked baby grand. Death has stolen their keys. The metronome still works. I slide its weight to the end, watch it pole-vault back and fore
‘Love and war are the same thing…’ — Miguel de Cervantes Somewhere over the tiled foothills of our council estate A man and a woman are arguing. The focus of the argument is something brutally trivial A TV programme choice, that sort of thing, Yet the air is a hot Isandlewana of big
He felt brave, capable and full of duty He went out with the rest of them and scoured the high grass And the tide-step and low sandy grass He saw how early morning on the river had its beauty They spread out in a loose crescent form Each man could hear the other’s high rubber
Night is returning to teatime. Soon a coneof orange streetlight will be all he has to see her byas she touches her laurel, steps inside her homeon which he’s been keeping an eye while she’s at work, as no one else will.Only the postie or Amazon opens that gateand once he saw the latter with
Open the front door into waterBrown water with no heart in itOne side of the street to the other – Small shops drowned in itOur car drowned in itThe sun gleamed down on it like a joke Unseasonal, climate change thingAt an upstairs window an old womanStaring down like a question Water in the hall,
The gutters glutted:rusty, fallen, ferrous stars. An avenue of beeches,gaunt, grey, naked, majestic on their red carpet,in a dream of dethronement.
I’m sailing to Tarshish as usual. The air is thick, Its walls are greyish white, This desk light flickers intermittently. Let me be plain: Being good in your sort of way Does not appeal to me. Why would I go to Nineveh? The parking’s diabolical And the people there Are not my type. Some send
(after Baudelaire) In order to write such undefiled poemsI must lodge in the suburbs of the sky,companion to the steeples, steeled by dreams,the bells’ mystic clamour flooding my mind. Awake in this eyrie, chin on arms, I see how the citizens toil and sleep,the towers, the chimneys – the city’s masts –vast cloudscapes evoking eternity. I can
Some endings have such richness in their flow,the night taking its temper from the day.You sport a smile when love gets up to go. Mirrors of time hold all you need to know,haloes of stars sustaining casual clay.Some endings have such richness in their flow. Far-off appointments, comet-like, will growinto your week-to-view, pointing your way.You
Busy little hammer on your block of wood,dark wine setting the house on fire,how diligently you work, how tirelessly, what scant attention I have given youtill now, unveiled – ba-boom –inside your tiny shed on a screen before surgery that will slow you almost to standstill.In an antenatal room, twice,I saw my daughters’ hearts tucked
Bad dreams ignoredlit raindrops on windows of the midnight busthen a footstep behind you like the girl on a Sydney beachwho picked up a tiny blue-ringed octopusmost dangerous creature in the seafor a selfie. It rested in the cup of her hand one small jelly spidertwo legs folded underas if it were on its knees
We left in a hurryand I had to leavemy solid-wood mahogany and spruce guitar. They said to bring only what we could carryand it would have taken both my armsto protect it from knocks and scrapes as I would a baby –for it too was made with love and in the belief it would last
We have stockpiled umbrellasand old-fashioned radiatorsa heap of mad grinsreminding me of so many school mornings fog pearling my regulation scarfas I walked from the stationpast grainy ice-sheaths of dead reedsaround the swan’s nest yearning for a glimpseof last year’s mystic swan bride.The wild ballerina. The last chancehaunting the mist. From Watershed (Hazel Press, 2023)
Have you ever held a gun before?I once fired a revolver, point-blank at Mark Stoneley,loaded with a roll of paper caps. He cried,and told his mum, who told my mum. So, No, not really.We drove towards Mexico, through sand duneslittered with shoes, a rag doll snagged on a barbed wire fence.He said, It’s not a
Folk on the mainlandare tightytighty.Folk on the mainlandwalk a rope. No listening on the mainland,only talking.To walk while you talkand to talk while you type. What use for the mainland?Polystyrene and mattresses.Bad juju on the mainland.Bad eating. Bad faith. What use for the ocean?For swallowing questions.Who when why what NO:shh shh on the shingle. Conundrum: