He left pawprints in the corridors. Attendants followed at a distance, collecting his droppings and listening for pronouncements. When they saw his tongue lolling, they knew he was thirsty, pressing forward with a pail. Some nights, hectored by matters of the state, they would hear him roar in his chambers, beat his paws against the
On a winter’s day, we took a trip to Wrabness. I was forcibly struck by Wrabness’s drabness. An empty street, as if everyone was ill. The air was preternaturally still. There was a single closed and shuttered shop. No birds sang. It wasn’t Adlestrop. Down at the estuary, the water was slate-grey, the sand and
Strange how the wind in certain placesbecomes your mindand your mind the sea.Shifting with degrees of perspicacity. Strange how the pines in certain placesbecome the fretand the fret the breeze.Tidal. Sputtering with incivilities. Strange how your bones in certain placesbecome the stones that make freeto stand. Or fall.Or to mutiny.
So as to not leave any marks on the freshly emulsioned walls by leaning the metal stepladder against them, and to save me the groan of starting next morning by heaving it up off the floorboards and lugging it into position, I stand it upright, dead centre of the empty lounge overnight, clothe the rungs
After the disappointment of the confit de canard and the ‘no shows’ of those I’d planned to see a face looms up right at the death, whale-like with shy pinprick eyes and then all in a rush just as the taxis arrive I’m being told memory is vivid even though his House had been Queen’s
Still clear, their first steps, the fields we camped in, the rained-on holiday lets… less so the white-lined blur of car journeys – their songs, games, laughter, arguments… their silences that gave way to sleep, the engine’s drone. Miles rolled into hours, years. Between the land and the sea we
Klimt’s trees stand frozen and clear, sleepily austere in their ghostly dawn-gaunt aura. Ranks of indigo, turquoise, sapphire glittering, like figures on a paper screen – floating, flat, no trace of shadow. At first, the trees rise thin and cold, but they pulse with such weird, blue profusion, responding to an awed, watchful eye, that
I am floating on heather again. A fleece unshorn for fifty years slips off me, rolls down the hill. Its tumbleweed won’t stop till the village where Gary and Bill wait for me and Emmy unlocks the corrugated hall and Stahl repairs his Morris outside Nancy’s shop. It’s early May. The bleating fields and the
Om – OMG! The cosmos sings! A few can hear its soft wild background murmur, its love song from the wild frontier. Then wonder shades to worry, as Earth, distressed, gets warmer. We share forebodings with our friends. We start to say we’re sorry, we say we’ll make amends. Diehards
What’s day to a miner? Shovels and picks. Ten fathoms deep the mind plays tricks. Like: I’m lying in bed with the sun flooding in. I’m married to a bright young thing in a yellow dress. She sings to me. I pull her close. My hands are clean. My hands aren’t clean. We dream the
Who were they kidding? Themselves for their sins? Or the man with a tripod calling say cheese to these old fashioned guests with their fixed wooden grins in the coffin shaped shadows of pollarded trees? Sometimes they seem no further away than the lift of a veil or the drop of a hat or the
Listen, and you’ll hear the tick of the poem’s stuttering heart; its breathless gush. But notice how it becomes sullen now, dragging its feet; refusing to play, until something catches its eye — a swift, perhaps, dividing the sky, its belly and beak skimming the surface of a river. It longs to tell you how
Coming back from the doctor, you have little to say. Treading the sorrowful stones of the Galgenstraat, our view across the Ij impeded by a new apartment block on the site of the fearful gibbet where Rembrandt van Rijn observed Elsje Christiaen tied to its arms, she was barely sixteen and you complain of the
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