Leckhampton chimney has fallen down’ – Ivor Gurney In fact, it’s still much as it was,if you can find it, and if the dogs(nobody walks the hill without one)will leave off for a moment jumpingto press their muddy scrawl on you. Out here, I’m protected, surelywith three jackets. I missed the bus,lost the path, then
In your lit eyes I see other candles, other flames. On the stiff white tablecloth I lay out my jokes like the contents of a handbag. Your laugh, as mine, sounds far away. But the scene — how close and familiar it all is! Uncountable sweetnesses, tragedies.
He hoards a rotation of them in a moated field. Flymos, like grounded UFOs, line the verges. Old Webbs and Greenworks are at grass. Hares are his sentinels, guarding the perimeter. He wears a duffle darkened with oil and mud and a hat that plays Test Match Special on Long Wave. For him,
Pull back the carpeton last year’s compost.Amid the richness:ratholes, a snakeskin;the fetid carcassof a wounded muntjac. We grow our foodbetween such influences.The body incorporateswhat the mind refuses, so there’s a hintof rat and snakein all of us. Our kindsoft hearts springfrom moist darknesses,the wasted ribcage. ‘Om’ is a sacred syllable in Hinduism, mystically considered to
(after Al Alvarez) Skirmishes, furtive scuffling in the gardens, furred burglaries. Unearthly wails of cats on heat. Behind the house, a strip of railway land where foxes drag their salvage from the street – the bramble-sheltered brood… Crows pick up the pieces, dropping scraps of bone that suddenly materialize on balconies, on patios and paths.
Well will wounded Wilko wieldhis bloody red/black axe –fingers fast on Fender.Watch him as he chops, attacks,his hearers hoarse ring rafters Weighty wordsmith’s word hoard wandersthrough the streets and down by jetties.Long his living lays will lingerin the wide world’s towns and cities So, for fearless friend and friendship,many moons and miles rememberedin the Great
Ironing is her favourite task. The rhythm and the steam transport her to an outer state more vivid than a dream – a place of creased and crumpled hills, a wet and heavy land through which a burning body moves, directed by her hand. Each stroke a stride, the rugged earth dissolves into a plain
Your phone still works. All I have to do is dial your old number and I’ll hear your voice sounding almost like yourself. Perhaps you are not feeling well? I am walking in a part of London unknown to me but for the fact you live here, and always have done – an alleyway I
Robin is dead no more shall sing nor ruffle his wing no more shall sing Robin is dead no more shall wait at the garden gate no more shall wait Robin is dead his soul has flown but whither gone oh wither gone Robin is dead and all my joy my sweet bonny boy and
My son, who’s never been allowed to tread on the scarce, yellowed lawns back in Spain, hesitantly takes a few steps in Priory Park, glances back, checks for approval, then breaks into a wild canter. And I, who played in our garden all summer long and who took it for granted, learn the amazement of
Something of the faded dandy hangs about God’s moth-eaten evening coat, his worn-out cloth-uppers. He seems to be cruising lost time in search of fellow flâneurs who might remember him from the good old days before he dyed his hair. He holds out a threadbare mauve suede glove as if begging forgiveness from the crowds
From direct to indirect speech,spelling and pronunciationremain the same, though the meaning of this word has changed forever,my tone no longer impatientor jokey, but strictly neutral. I end up juggling sentencesto give the proper noun the slipand dodge any mention of Dad.
I’m four pints deep at The Signal Box since no trains are leaving Euston now. At the bar there’s a guy who talks and talks. The departure boards are blank as snow. Silent as someone who, three hours ago, stood at the tracks’ edge. Turning and turning a stone in one hand. Someone who knew
These are the days when no words will do.Such horrors accrue by the phone’s blue lightconstant as the wind tonight rattles throughthe alleys, a side gate banging to. Rain whitein the gutters, the new year’s promise a kiteflapping in a thunderstorm as you, farwith only second-hand knowledge, rewritethese lines, for all the good they’ll do.
Instead of scattering your ashes, let’s go for another walk, across those swaying fields you’ll sprint half the length of, sun low as I dawdle your lead, watch you weaving free through waist-high grasses, time blurring as wind whittles away at gritstone edge. You’ll sniff your way up the scree, village blinking below like so
(after Mallarmé) The moon grew sad. Abstracted seraphim, weeping with their bows in their hands, in the calm of misty flowers, played on mortal violas white sighs glazing the deep blue of His corollas – it was the sacred day of your first kiss. My reverie, content to be martyred like this, drew a lucid
Her tiny headpeers above three jarscrammed with votive jonquils – her face among the crows, the marching limes, the warty humps and bubblesof the London planes. Bronze and bluebell. Bronze on high Portland stone. Her beauty wrenched from clay, whose sculptor stabbed unfinished voidsto stare directly at the surging wave, eyes that studied fin and rainbowforced, like millions
Ever wonder why foxes always slip into poems? Imagine the present moment embodied, coat ablaze as it skips littered bushes and moonlight’s lament like the burnt shock of iron sediment at a river’s turn, you’ll find its furtive glare soon meets your own. Now it stops, head bent to sniff the rutted earth scattered with
(after Rimbaud) Lord, when the meadows are cold, and when in the despondent hamlets all prayer is silent, down on Nature bare and old let them swoop from the skies, those dearest and delightful crows. Strange troops with your cheerless cries, winds assault your nests, it seems! Over winter’s jaundiced streams, lanes with moss-grown calvaries,
The squirty old style fuel pumps lie dead as I hook the car up to the charging point and brace in case the plug recoils. I’m pleased we’re powered by wind and solar now shale gas lies untouched and coal’s defunct. A half-hour charge beside the jet-wash gun with pushy forecourt ads, someone changing oil,