Above

the cat lapping  the milk-scattered floor, above the ebony table

where a child wreaks breakfast havoc and splutters joy

and old lace curtains frame a grandmother who dreams.

Above the blazing window, above the antique apartment,

above the serious town, above the heavy mountains

above the cloud-scarped landscape, above the liquid earth

above the glowing universe, it's wonderful;

but where

the Angel of the

Universal Judgement

keeps

Perfect Forms,

above absolutes,

above intuitions.

above vital forces,

above archetypes,

above universals

(pressure

and

temperature

constant)

I cannot breathe

To Aisling

Up by my heart,

whenever I lifted you ,

your two-year-grown legs

would flail the air,

as if testing for space.

More than the air,

I heard the humour of your voice.

From here I see the famished gulls.

More than the years

I saw you in a winter room

and the laughter you wrote with.

From here I gaze at the parching

of Autumn-rumoured leaves.

More than the weight,

I saw you share the moment

opened on together

and the story of your smile.

From here I gaze at

jackdaws daring hawks

yet cannot  make the pool.

Next to the heart,

I see you in the freedom

of the house, more than air.

09/01/07

Where did they come from, the voices that made me?

I knew the intimate, foul taste of failure; the bully’s

shadow always in my eye. The flinch of instinctive pain

flushed before the playground bell, raw misery rushing

its stain of pity, its shame of concern to a hail of scuffs.

And yet there were those keen voices, the chant

of catechism, times tables and join-on games.

I take myself again past the telephone poles

that smelled of creosote in front of the prefab estate.

Unaware of defeat and loneliness, I wandered

the crooning streets, hearing another credibility

in the Morris Minor rattling up the road,

in the hum of the wood-cased TV in houses

that sometimes let you in, as it tuned up

to flicker expensive, new , blue light.

Apart

Apart from

a part,

a part from

‘apart’

is art.

To part from

a part,

in

a part from

a part

plays

a part:

what’s he

apart from the part

or the part 

apart

 from  him?

We are

apart

from each and

a part

of each

is

a part

of us,

apart.

Apart from

a part,

a part

from

‘apart’

is part.

Thursday Morning, at the Window.

I eat my breakfast alone, take down

a white, porcelain mug, my daughter

bought me and coffee, always instant.

I heap the dry, dark spoonfuls, always strong,

while my Barndutsch kettle wheezes and boils

with a blue flare that banters with easing light.

I take the old frying pan we bought

in Twickenham. We wore its Teflon down

to a sky-grey baldness on which we fed

a family from fledglings into flight.

I remember the quartet of voices

in Saturday scherzi , then sequenced rests.

My fear the coda would come, soon confirmed.

I chop onions into crystals which I

simmer under olive oil and watch them

brown , raise bubbles ,like fingerling trout.

I slice tomatoes, goldfinch red and blond,

 and I grip the  limp, reducing forms ,ready

to throw them in with beaten yolks and whites.

Huevos Mexicanos , she called them,

the girl from Guadalajara city,

who lived, later, in my empty house.

You were supposed to add hot peppers.

She knew I would not like a bitter taste.

It was a time when I was fearful

of what I feared, forgetting the earth rolls

to take the landscape of this city

out of limestone night and into morning.

I forgot keen beech and blackberry leaves,

unfurling through stone on this inland cliff.

while insects plodded and birds prised them out.

Even the fly has its measured history

that shares electrons with the burning stars,

with woodspurge thrust through dry asphalt

They bloomed through five thousand deciduous years,

and ducks flying out to Stapleton, or Roath.

Raindrops scatter on the window panes

as I tumble breakfast onto  a plate,

look out on the neighborhood I live with,

minded of our ready fearfulness,

that trades its care between the living

and wonder about the taste of peppers.

At Llantwit Major

 1. Meditation

Jackdaws drift by the tower

they sense to be a cliff-top.

Finches and hedge-sparrows

perch in the hawthorn,

to share false safety;

the gift is to understand

nature is perfectibly sacred,

but where you walk, you hover,

where you climb, you sway.

Take care not to forget

the vows which He

has made with you.

For once, try to see.

Give up that scanning gaze.

Detachment is only

to be attached elsewhere.

The gossip of

the Ogny brook.

recites a prose

of soil denuding

into the stream,

as yet unsalted by

the distant sea.

Yet what is real

is where your

heart is hidden,

waiting to be found,

like a hide and seek child,

aching for discovery.

Take care not to forget

the waft of pears,

hops and apples

in the church porch.

The odour of nature

swells and lingers.

The drawings

of three year-olds lie,

as frail to time as

the seven-hundred year-old

Christ-child re-emerged from

the Puritan violence of lime,

these offerings of stilled speech.

Turn the corner here and see

the wounded granite;

its hands of stone,

its ribs of stone,

a gravestone altar; a double gift;

Katherin Thomas of the Ham,

a woman, a girl, or an infant?

Late afternoon sunlight

brazes the white walls.

Like fire struck from old flint

the smell of autumn incense

fills the beehive font,

an office of care saved from

the blasphemy of chaos.

Take care and see

what has been bound back here:

the ivy that shines from the graves,

the full-berried branch,

the shadow of a miscast palm.

on the Galilee Chapel.

Make your way

through the Norman church

past the porch to the tower,

ivoried with light,

with gold rays flooding

the chancel floor,

a house that forgets care.

Take care to remember

stone figures lie here;

stone shaped to a hand,

stone shaped to a foot,

a woman dead in childbirth,

a priest wasted with despair

and the girl, Mary,

living with her baby

in the South window

mother of our creator,

from the blasphemy of chaos.

It is time to give the self away;

a vow you made with

her murdered child.

Carved figures from

dusty wood cling poorly

from the clumsy chancel arch.

A tablet bosses dead names

witnessed by women

in the helpless

warfare of loss,

the hollow, unheard

report of violence,

that slashed old stone

into the ditch.

This sea-sheltered town

is a place for emptied hearts

to ache for the

instruments of love,

for their inner, silent music.

warm quiet chords.

Strings and wood blaze on the

countenance of violence,

on the break of truth.

There was darkness

on the face of the sepulchre

and the women hovered above it.

And darkness fills

out our history.

On bloodied feet,

Christ comes

down the High Street

with the hoard of futures

in his wounded hands

and drags the seeds of his Word

from the beech-grey clouds

out of the skirling wind

over the Holms and wintering seals.

For once won't you see

how the tools of sense are blunt?

They will tell you only a poet

would be a Christian to-day.

Be thankful the only

Christians are poets.

Tell them the hour of the girl

who sings in labour

becomes the hour

of the cross.

becomes the hour

of Christs' grave

that loss of lost humanity.

Help me keep up with her foot

that numbs the poison

of the English viper

and runs from me,

put off by my pride.

Breathe into my heart

her breath that dances on dust.

vanished at my lust.

help me catch her eyes,

downcast by my rage.

I walk where friends

have gathered

reading maps in

the measured light.

The Celtic crosses

for Samson, Illtydd

and the Lords of Glywsing

turn into bread

in the legislating light,

excite the fine dust

in the window beams.

I knead thought's naked

unsure dough from sleep.

You leave the handprint

of your wisdom, Mary,

on the bread of making.

You leave the handprint

of your strength, Word,

on the bread of giving.

The secret fire burns

in the dry oven

of this ruin.

Its light is so fresh

we cannot see it

until it opens our hearts.

One second invents the next.

Each one now grasped when new.

Each memory traces an icon,

secretes the shape that is actual

in the way the river widens

the valley out of the sea's

tugging restlessness.

Its gift flows to

the Colhugh Valley,

ringing for Illtyd

in the silver of its tone,

soft through the little birches,

where collared doves settle

on a line of safety

from the blasphemy of chaos.

What have I ever done

except in the shadow

of your hand?

Lord of making,

create a dearer freshness,

an unseen shoot.

no frozen dream

that my heart should breathe.

Take care not to forget

the high costs stored here

in packs of clay

and forget mere care

as we become God's field,

as we become His buildings

not to forget the work of Your will,

the ambit of your act,

not to forget vows made

to the remembered.

Creator, uncreated,

undo this self.

Let the Father find

joy in my face

whose wounding creation

is the face of Him

in whose wounded creation

His Father can rejoice.

Wrap this naked

creature

in the shadow

of your shaping.

Take away my worth

as I find your joy.

Let me learn love

to create you in me.

from the image to the face.

Did I remember the fingerling trout,

that scudded in the brown stream,

copied in the swirl of weed to hide?

Did I see the Cross through the yew tree?

Do I live in a world that is always Yours?

Did I recollect the breeze from the sea?

Do I sleep through your passion?

Did I remember the pointer of the cypresses?

Do I wear His shadow?

Did I hear the unsaid water?

Do I leave prayer unpoured?

Did my mind taste salt?

Do I fear His pure pain?

Did my speech catch fire?

Are my words roads?

2.Sequence

Have I become two selves to come by here;

one, a child who smells at moistened autumn,

wants to burrow through these hedgerows, so near 

they cocoon our car? Its motor fades to a hum.

The car-park's full; a self of thought

gets out to know and asks why he has come.

What I am has a thirst already caught

on the stream that falls from the copper hill.

The quiet sky keeps time a monk once taught

to the young who wanted the water's thrill,

to the old who walked where lava once bled

scalded to a grey, geometric sill,

a graveyard for the Jurassic dead.

What I think works out process, change and hours.

More happened here than can be said.

Less will happen now the record's ours.

The turn of the bell and the manuscript

has been taken by the ledger's powers.

After the Angevin worm crept in, clocks stripped

the stone rule of its sanctuary.

Mud sank the books where children skipped.

This is no place for thought, or infancy.

This valley will not now flood. People revel

in gene-pooled, timeless labour-glory,

one with workers who built the sea-wall level.

Thought has lost its eyes, its printed history.

Cold stone leaves only the death-pyx fossil.

Even if we noted every second passed.

our poker words would fail in the effort.

Instead we let oblivion file fast.

There's nothing here that doctrine taught.

God is no content to content those who die.

We must be open to our reaching nought.

For self to con the self's a heavy lie.

Faith is no fantasy for the frail.

Here, the hedge trims blue by the endless sky

and makes a backdrop for the sparrow's tail,

sparking brittle twigs on fruiting rowan.

We want goodness and thirst it, though we fail.

I climb, hearing a cello part hummed, human,

by a friend who has found a species of kale.

Experience brings back the child new-grown

to the fragile piety of neighboured others

and to as many selves as we have memories.

The spirit spins wholes, tells their stories

Left on land, I stop as sea-cloud gathers.

At Oban

Sea-blue flowers creep from the wind

on a grey window-sill: the sky changes

a hungry child, beaming and savage,

learns to spit for fun and then in anger

to relax at its own fascination

in a rainbow of earth, corn, marigold ,juniper,

thyme, oxeye, sea-marguerites and saltwort.

Over the bay, sea mists hide the peaks,

while the little  islands burn in the sunlight.

The flowers shake on the ledge

and are bent by gusts that tousle the willow-herb

and rustle the sapling birches.

All the time a slow, thunder –storm sounds,

while in this solemn nest, your peace breathes.

August Neutrals

The month, looking browns,

peach-pink, natural

on the eye.

The motif, shadows stay

longer, highlight

the soft colourings.

Sable, mats, right in the crease

very soft, thrown in together,

light green lustre,

asking love:

Autumn.

Ballroom of the Hanged.

Armless friend, dark gibbet,

your heroes dance and dance,

        wizened, to a devil’s quodlibet.

Saladin sets your bones to prance.

Master Beelzebub straightens the tie

on puppets of grime with an upward grin,

launches them shivering, footloose and wry,

dancing and dancing, as herald angels sing.

Shocked manikins, with wasted arms braced:

like fouled diapasons, chests stabbed with day,

which once the pretty girls embraced

and now make rough love, in a long tangled lay.

Hurrah for the dancers in such gutless joy,

you show-dance upon the longest floor.

Now it’s your hop! A fight or a waltz to enjoy;

crazy Beezulbub’s fiddles’ so coy.

Hard on your heels, your sandals aren’t worn.

Just about everyone’s stripped to the bone.

Shameless! No scandal! Don’t look so forlorn.

White snow caps your skulls with hats of your own.

The crow sets a feather on each shattered brain.

Now flesh-scraps can dangle from each skinny chin.

You might say their dark giddy fight with a chain

stiffens them into knights. They slash shields of card, not tin.

Hurray for the sleet that soughs through ballroom bones.

Like an organ of iron, the charred gibbet howls;

in violet woods, wolves answer its groans.

The sky line turns red from infernal bowels.

Hey there, burial hooligans, strike up!

None of your secretive bead telling here,

spine-prayers to lost love’s a pallid set up,

Hey, you dead, an abbey? No fear.

Then see how some dry-bone giant

rears up, stage-centre of the death-dance

and into the reddened sky, a rampant

stallion, breakneck on the noose, askance,

tightens his knuckles to his thigh with a crack

loosing shrieks like a ribald cackle,

then like a thug returned to his shack

steps up to the bone-tune spectacle.

Armless friend, dark gibbet,

your heroes dance and dance,

gaunt, to a devil’s quodlibet.

Saladin sets your bones to prance.

 25/05/06

 1. The Flicht Frae the Warld’s Wrack

1. Leave

My Bernese flat so stacked with bills

spent clothes, bottles the spider fills.

           I snapped shut the old door

on Calvin. Magma’s cab waiting

for the Bahnhof run and leaving

            behind on the hall floor

the notes on you to grasp

           your style, your conflict and your thought.

Magma could only grasp

 at my career, not as it ought;

              importance and fortune,

       but obscure diction’s haze.

              In tradition’s fiction

       to see beyond the maze.

2. Icons:Compline Feria Secunda.

The colours laugh and stretch

across the austere stones.

The sky makes entry here

to soar in chorus

with the leaden lights

and fuse a web of faith

from the browns of growth

with the fires of Godhead,

that love-triangle

to which we trust our death.

3.Lambada for a Jilted Sock

(To the tune “Chorando se foi”)

This is my song, so huskily sung

that the Spandex swells up and I’m spun.

My love has no match in the underwear drawer

and my twine has no peer, stretch no more.

I don’t suppose you’ve met with my hose

with spangles the colour of rose.

I remember a time when my silk was sublime,

now she’s gone to a toe-sock in lime.

My dance is so lonesome, I can’t get it on

and I swirl in the wash, all hope gone.

I don’t suppose you’ve met with my hose

with spangles the colour of rose.

My ribs are all torn, my toe wipes the tar,

and I long for my twin now afar.

My flanks are forlorn, my company odd,

to Terylene couples , a wad.

I don’t suppose you’ve met with my hose

with spangles the colour of rose.

I’m crumpled and torn. My rights have been cleft,

I pull up my hopes, but she’s left.

My agony grows.  Have you met with my hose?

with spangles once coloured of rose.

4.Big Brother, Almere

It was late Autumn.

Casually-dressed 

men, women,

with few belongings,

walked into a disused

factory

outside a small

Low Country

town, whose name

they did not

know.

A small wind,

cold, yet fresh,

had ruffled their

hair,

their clothes.

There was a

smell of rust,

oil, a hum of

traffic,

distant.

It was late

autumn,

when someone

did not follow them in,

closed the door.

They will come

out

in some early

winter,

as silent

as thirty million

eyes.

At last themselves,

no longer;

at last

no longer

others.

It  will then

be too

late to empty

any more

of their last

selves.

5. Elegy for Barbara M. Peddar

I’d thought you’d showed me most of what I knew

until your unseen sign; people die, they go.

As kids, day-long, we’d pester and pursue

our Mum and Dad for news when you would show.

Mum’s little sister dressed in pattern-book Dior

who brought us ten-inch, forces-discount records,

adding a laughter to Middlesbrough’s bore .

We felt the life, the oboe in your words

and heard The King And I, yhe Oistrakhs.

My first Kodak shot was the last of you.

That thoughtful loveliness, so marked the tracks

that day by Brock Hill Road we stumbled the view;

the sea alive there, skylarks , the quarry,

a boy, grass under mesmerising blue;

you were a harrier attacking worry

on that lea hill in summer-tranquil Kent.

I empathised the way you saw, then thought

and did not merely note what  routine sent.

We left you alone there that soft autumn.

My father told us all that you had gone,

whom we had left alive, become a sum.

Averse to homework, I kept the TV on,

watching costumed pirates singing crap.

Dad let me, knowing silence would weigh hard;

your raw, final lesson’s stinging gap

a final crack whose hollowness I guard.

Nothing’s worth it, (did I  nothing from then on?)

nothing is, except your friendship’s wonder gone.

6. Looking

I recall the fight I got into at school.

Just to show I wasn’t the softest softie.

When I got him on the ground,

I looked up and saw a ring of faces

looking down, so serious, I laughed.

Later we went on a trip to Hampton Court

and the guide told us the lady on the ceiling

could follow you with her eyes

wherever you went. The others laughed

7. Slave Burial

Not knowing what to do

for the still figure found

on the trestle:

not knowing what to do,

someone washed and dried him

and laid him, crouched and

naked under his cloak,

where the archaeologist

found him, when she

lifted the two-thousand

year-old roof-tiles.

Not knowing what to do

with the necklace

of carved bone-beads,

amber and seashells

she found with him -

as, from over two hundred

in the slave-cemetery,

none had such a thing.

Someone had not known

what to do. for the youngest ,

there, at eight years old.

                                    Bye-Election

The servant wanted an explanation

of good authority. The Master answered

“You must store enough food.

You must keep enough guards

and have the confidence of the people.”

“And if one of these three had to be let go?”

“Then let the soldiers go.” “And out of the two?”

“Then let the food rot. The confidence

of the people is all you need for good authority.”

     Conversations about a Pond

Sunlight and the sordid shape of leisure

locked by the legal norms of space:

nurses and secretaries treasure

minutes stolen from a tight clock-face.

I stumble over to the weedy span

where servile goldfish separate

at my measured shadow’s chance

upon an oppositioned climate

that rounds on my hominoid stance,

as if to tell me where my genes began.

I have come from where I would not be,

nursing a daughter grown thin with pain,

wishing her the starting game to set her free

from illness and the sheets’ terrain.

The measurement of time is ordinary.

The ordainer and ordained are set

to order endings and end all ordinals.

Some chance will count pi’s tail out yet.

The span of sunlight, my life with animals

are counting down. We‘re both God’s quarry.

Existence is a briefer certainty than death.

I do not count on it, but count it wonder

that the paths still fork to tell my breath

I am my choosing. I play to grow fonder

of those whose time-share space I contract.

Yet it’s a Bank Holiday. The labs are shut

to test for maladies my child-adventurer

might have brought back in a bite or cut

so I wait it out. Watch mercury fall surer,

then leave bewildered that I cannot act.

Most of what I do is stillness, and a wait

for chances that settle with uncertainty,

unsettling expectations that frustrate

me under a bus-stop glare’s passivity.

I think back to the pool, to the place

where people ponder.”See you there. It’s quiet”

“You know with pavestones and chicken-wire.”

“You can’t be overheard close by. Try it.”

Voices in another space where concerns retire:

the play of voices lower, as they can’t embrace.

So I go home in the dulling sunshine,

wanting the sound of a loved one

to annoy me or tell me I look fine.

I recall that circle of pondweed gone

from my nosy gaze for tadpoles,

frogspawn, or the flip of toads.

The eye is a blind circle that can only see.

Just as the heart is steady as it loads

the woe of expectation in a hurry

to beat my unsure splinters into fatal wholes.

1. Dardagny.

i The Chateau.

The chateau’s bleak,

eye-slit windows

bully the vine-combed

river valley, still

unremembering

forgotten violence,

still protecting

a sweetness that can

never leave the mouth

from the wasp,

from the wild boar’s

thirstiness, from butterflies,

yellow or white

that after three generations

invisibly ravage

the life of this demensne

and then preserve it

because the fox

and the badger must drink

because it is time for the roses

to give their lips to the poison

of red spiders.

Once you could have asked

this of the crickets

who chatter away

unheeded, grown meaningless

on the dry, guarded edges

of this secreting world.

  To Seraphina

The road to the centre

named after you,

the towers raised

to the place where

you knew you began,

the wasting of the earth

was suspended while

the violets grew above

the towers to sound

out as bells while

you smile in silence

alive in the unseen

reality that begins

in the blue clamour

of the evening light.

Eclipsis

1.South Pennines;

You both took the train to Keighley.

You walked all the way

to your grey-slab town,

in hooded travelling dresses,

even though your physiques were small.

I can tell from the Paisley gown

in the glass case, which only a child

could wear to-day.

On your way back along Cemetery Road

with the dry South Pennine undergrowth,

on either side,what did you talk about?

There were two of you, then,

both women returned from business

in London with your publisher

to prove you were not one writer.

There are two of me now,

the poet and the man, in overtake.

2. Eclipse

Magnitude; eighty-nine percent.

Maximum; eleven twenty,

South Pennines.

I stepped onto the platform

at walked through the empty station

and climbed alone, onto

the blue, double-decker

and let it lurch through

bog-cotton, harebells

and heather, while whinchat

darted restlessly

from willowherb

to foxglove,

like tie-died sparrows

and skylarks prattled in

a Wedgewood sky.

The stop was by a

stacked coalyard.

When I looked

back the bus was still there,

like a child’s toy

by a crumpled jacket.

A woman in a car

behind was

pointing to the sun.

Out of instinct

I looked up

into the full glare.

As cloud covered over,

I looked again

and saw the first paring.

Taking the cobblestone

path into the village,

a feathery darkness overtook me.

As I passed the Church,

the birds were silent

and I felt the cold of those vaults

until I reached the door

and, almost imperceptively,

a brightness.

3 Patrick Bronte’s Telescope.

None of you had felt physical ecstasy,

when you wrote.

None of you had seen an eclipse,

such as today's, or the ones your father

worked out, with Halley’s calculator,

over ruling his century.

He would have known today’s date.

4. Films-Crypt.

Film-set tombstones lay against

the outhouse walls.

Two tiny fritillaries shimmered

and froze in an unseen web

among the poky lavender,

the swarming flies and

the burnt perfume of the peat.

I thought of Buñuel's forgotten film

the film-maker himself,

‘a dirty, ragged, black-haired child’;

setting the scene for so many others,

Hollywood-smooth

Heathcliffs and wan Catherines.

5. Haworth

At the church, they have re-inserted time

in the tower and returned its crown

of hawthorn stone, overshadowing

the spire and former poverty.

In the church yard, a coffin was being

wheeled into the church,

like a child in a push-chair,

over born in new infancy.

The Vicarage has been restored.

It is Charlotte revising

the text of Emily's living room.

In the church yard,

looking for contemporaries,

I heard the low panting

of a huge dog, thinking it might be

Keeper, protecting her bedroom.

I recognised the sound of the

Railway Children's train,

gathering steam,

which  always overtaken

as it never is their train

until their father comes.

Instead, the undertakers

smoked by the porch,

like Chicago hoods.

6.Waterfall

Unable to finish Wuthering Heights,

I climb its pages up to the stream

that had its bridge, once, a ring on its finger

destroyed in a flood, as a wronged bride’s

helpless hand might attempt

to break the privileged stigma of its gold.

7.Top Withins

A local man and an

American woman unable to go on;

a witch, bitter at her burning

by unpitying sheep under

penny peep-show lights;

in the sycamores, watched by a little boy

wanting the bondage of the stones.

I was never supposed to see them.

I was never supposed to be there.

Now both minds are bared under myths

of privileged, private pain.

Fame cuts in, like a black fly's head

on the white sloe berry.

8. Haworth Moors

Having passed so many ruins

some shored up with timber scaffolding

(that crumbles to the touch).

I came to a row of cottages,

expecting to see the TV set

blazing “Neighbours”

or MUFC football-strip

hanging on the line

and their bearers

harangued from the kitchen.

Yet they were habitably empty;

that strange, futile reminiscence

of recent death.

The moor is encroaching;

tattered convululus.

rippling the meadow grass.

9.Lower Laithe Reservoir

Under the leaf-hazy reservoir,

the gabled home lies drowned.

Its clock-face eaten by shoals of perch

While in the toy shop the plastic

pendulums swing, like tortoiseshell

butterflies on heather-flowers.

The village drowned in shadows

of unaccustomed darkness;

silence has rotted the grain

of vanished children's voices,

entering a still house,

rancous with the thrill

of new heavens.

Calderdale.

1. Lost

The chestnut foal,

its towsled mane,

so silken in its fire,

grazes beside its Airedale dam,

near Bradford.

By the Old Mills in Halifax

new lopped tree branches

yellow into premature autumn;

foals lost to their sires.

2. Old Man

The old man on the bridge

told me the water

had been yellow with silage

a few days before;

few fish were taking.

On the writhing surface

of the peat-hued Calder

a huge, cunning  trout

flicked at a fly,

the whole swim-feed’s

breadth between the snout

and its caudal fin

“And I, too, live here

-in that barge,” he said!

3.At the bus-stop

At the bus-stop

waiting for the bus

to Heptonstall.

a loaf breasted,

well-girthed woman

warns her son "Pack it in!"

"Margritt's spittin!"
"Pack it in then"

Then the shelter's frame quivered

and the little boy

with a shaven head

howled into owlish glasses

“Ow that 'urts”,

His piercing shrieks

wake the ducks in the park.

The other children,

smelling injustice

slide away, like real Houdinis,

pause, into a circus troupe or

a hostile chorus

from Aeschylus,

to the relief of the

youngest who nurses

an aching head,

"Shoot yer fooking gob”,

I look away

remembering

my towsed childhood

wondering which side

of childhood

I wanted to be on

A massive hand

begins to soothe the

straw white head,

eclipsing protest.

4. Closures, Leeds.

(i)

Looking for the poetry section

in Waterstone’s,

I find it’s next to the Vanilla porn.

The assistant comes over

to tell me they’re closing,

but the other store closes later.

I thank her,

wondering for ever,

what need she thought

late closing could provide.

(ii)

She sits at the front of the bus,

reading a romance

with a naked woman on the front

with a silly hat.

Her front cover

is superbly poised;

pin-stripe suit,

brown-edged lips

and a pub-identity card.

Enquiry

Do you remember where I was?

The urban landscape does not make

for an easy recollection.

Who was it, asking for help, or

 just directions to get away?

That serious passivity

of the helpless, of the confused.

Can you remember what I said?

The only memory I have

is of a pained disappointment

on the face of the asking one

as I said what I can’t recall.

2.Fair Melusine.

In two shakes of a tail;

she had met

a well- met man

and raised a fabled family

despite collective

appointments

at the local hospitals,

which,

being Lords of Lusignon,

were private affairs.

She had only one

shortcoming

not wanting to be seen naked

by her man.

The bathroom lock

was never reliable

and she fled,

never asking herself

whether he might

fancy a bit of fish.

But then

she had the protection

of Romantic admirers,

Mendelssohn made overtures

and she still holds Beethoven

to his IOU for an opera..

Lest she be thought

irresponsible;

her dragon flies

over the deathbed

of any of her dear

descendants,

though it is hard

to believe

it cries real tears. 

4. First Chorus

From the heart of the earth

I am floating backwards,

reflecting from your eyes

that shall be the stream,

that snakes its current,

that shall be your hair

that eddies, rope-gnarled, shall drag

past silver birches.

The weed in the water

that shall be your eyes,

stirs like a gold-bottomed eel,

while you chatter on, river-sided,

where we meet; the moisture of your lisp

the honey of your Cockney Polish in my ear.

You will not let me go,

not having learned vocabulary

for parting in the grammar book

of my affections.

Besides with the radio blaring Gluck,

you don’t have to listen to

dull dirges on pogroms any more.

Your country gait has turned my eyes,

so alluring now in this monarchy

of reigning cat-walks and

dog collared Anglican necks.

Now you lick a lead pencil

to master from me and for me

all the words that will define

my drowning and my sure entanglement.

From “Touching the Borders.”

7.Via di Commune Vecchio.

The geranium windows

sparkle in the trembling teardrops.

This late climax of the sun

unrolls across

the cobblestones.

Cats hold contemplative sway

over porches and steps,

which lead to

the little wooden door

I opened with a key

from a magic catalogue.

Gin

The clean meniscus rules a line

between the tropics,

hurls lime and ice into the swell.

The limits are drawn

between cold and sober, hot and high.

You lose your bearings, whichever way

the water sways on conscience,

or consciousness and  dots the “i”,

with a fuller stop , your head.

Horses,Werribee

They are already facing

into the night

that we have made their country.

They stand stiller

under the rain

than impassive rocks.

Penned from

our restlessness

that we have made                               

the country of our loss

 Interior psalm 3

What on earth do you want now?

I’m not taking any more rides

to fascinating landscapes,

or museums of frozen imagination.

I’m not cruising those parties

of the sad and the rich

whose language I am

forgetting to speak.

I don’t go to the great,

 empty houses where

decision-makers smile

at my guileless thoughts,

or cut me dead.

I wanted to live

on the surface of my hopes

away from significance

and its innocent victims

away from the projects

of happiness and

their duped clients,

away from the counselors

of sanity and their tearful

waiting rooms.

Ground level means

you cannot see beyond

the curve the earth makes

to keep going and I do not want

to see beyond my being

and then you come

rising from the other side

that’s also beautiful

and say you’ve found me.

The Ledbury Tesco Song

I don’t put up with yew thenkin’

This is n’t my plece ere. I’ll slap yew

if you mak it differen’.

I cun ‘ere  evverywun  too

in my town wur its fun

cos I get to ere tru’

a’ th’ balls frum  everywun

about me and my  shitty crew.

We dunno ‘ow tuh work, sun,

cos we don everdo that screw

an’ ‘ave quallitty  time by the tun.

My torso’s one tattoo

cost me less than the wun

to get the stud  out, run through

my brain and I’m the one

who’ll marry cousin ‘Pru

cos together we have fun.

I’ll wait til she’s of age, mind you,

‘cos  cos I’m a gentle mun’.

I go with United ‘cos yew

lurn to maim an’  numb

and Eminem I do

 becos it’s wat I dun,

in the safety of the few.

I don’t want Tescos  to cum

through the public loo

becos its my tick for scum.

As fur jobs it’s an evil brew

cos foureign people come

and steal ‘em, but  its true

like to fight  ‘um 

but the local shop’s the place

to do a nice kicking  in the face

but Tesco, clean and tidy, makes us glum’

I had not thought

this new heart I'd moved into

had room for anybody else,

but you have settled in

as casual as sparrows,

rowing with each other

over who looks younger,

whose hair shines the best.

You busy yourselves

on walks through my story mind

taking turns to be in role

and holding long

discussions, deep into the night.

When its morning I wake you

from stillness with a pass

for new places to explore

whose names only you

can really know.

You call me softly

as I had fallen back asleep,

not thinking my sense

had any part for you,

a dream I caught

as the mirror misted.

Preposturals

1.About

'about'

not much is about;

not much about the

motorway diversion

that brought about the cars;

not much about the town,

about the tabacs,

about the factories,

about the offices,

about the aeroplane,

making the about turn

about the airport you left

about three.

There's little about,

about about,

so it's time nothing more

about about

was talked about.

2. Above

the cat lapping  the milk-scattered floor, above the ebony table

where a child wreaks breakfast havoc and splutters joy

and old lace curtains frame a grandmother who dreams.

Above the blazing window, above the antique apartment,

above the serious town, above the heavy mountains,

above the cloud-scarped landscape, above the liquid earth

above the glowing universe, it's wonderful;

but where

the Angel of the

Universal Judgement

keeps

Perfect Forms,

above absolutes,

above intuitions.

above vital forces,

above archetypes,

above universals

(pressure

and

temperature

constant)

I cannot breathe.

3.A cross

across

a cross

across

a cross

and across a cross;

a cross across a cross yet across

a cross a cross

across

a cross,

so

a cross

across

a cross

across

a cross, 

now

a cross

across

a cross

across

a cross ,

then

a cross

across

a cross

across

a cross.

You get across, across your cross, my Lord.

In Your churches, Lord, I come across cross-purpose, and cross consolation.

4.Against

this last,

against the multitude,

against the population

against the nations

against the country

against the state

against the cities

against the towns

against the commune

against the learned

against the fools

against the holy

against the ugly,

I bear no grudge.

save for one;

you let love go.

5.Along

the way;

move along there.

Along the birth,

along the growth,

move along.

Along the loving kiss,

along the mating joy.

Along the kidding,

no kidding,

move along.

Along the working,

along the paying,

move along.

Along the ageing

along kid's loving

move along.

Along kids' mating

move along.

Along kids' kiddies

move along, then.

Along lost love,

move along.

Along the silence,

move along.

Along the leaden frame

move along.

Along the empty house,

move along there.

Along the empty bed,

move along there.

Along the abyss,

move along there

6.Amid

the chaos,

amid the heroes,

amid the tumult,

amid the struggle,

amid the strife,

amid the storm,

amid the rage,

amid the victory,

amid defeat,

amid the fouls;

someone

always forgets

whose side they

were on.

7. i.m. James Reeves

A Midst

is the pet

of a gnarled old writer,

who lives under a tree,

whose poetry fails to address

the pity of our times.

Amidst his cob-webbed brain,

a midst lies curled,

mindful the post-modern poet

fares no better.

8.Aside

the leak,

it was only an aside,

aside her tittle-tattle,

aside her gossip,

aside her tales,

aside her stories,

aside her scandals...

a side of her, I miss.

9.Aslant

is a shy animal;

his eyes aslant,

his face aslant,

his mien aslant,

his habitat aslant,

his prey aslant,

his spoor aslant,

his pace's aslant

his party’s aslant,

his mate's aslant.

To get a slant,

go visit aslant.

I shan't.

10.

A thwart

lives in crevices

that ordinary words never reach.

It lives athwart our loving couple

and their love.

It lives athwart the business deal

and its completion.

It lives athwart the child

and his teacher.

It lives athwart the sunlight

and the cloud,

athwart the rich and poor,

athwart all hope and fear.

It can catch you when alone.

It lives between captivity and freedom,

which is just about where you are.

So watch out!

11.

There's a lot hidden

behind

behind,

which is why we keep it behind.

One is taught not to show one's behind

and never to be behind.

We've hidden the behind

behind the behind.

It follows on behind,

It all stays behind,

but you.

12.Before

waking,

before doing anything,

before even thinking,

before dressing,

before breakfast,

before planning,

before meditating,

before calculation,

before leaving,

remember,

she’s there

before you,

not there.

13."Below

the rafters,

below the attic,

below the bedrooms,

below the stairs,

below the parlour,

below the floor-boards,

below the cellar,

below the trap-door,

below the cavern,

below the fissure,

there's a …"

"Shut up or he’ll hear you."

14.Beneath

him,

beneath contempt,

beneath her,

beneath loathing

beneath them,

beneath disgust

beneath us,

beneath revulsion,

beneath the veil;

the lawyers laugh their heads off.

15.Besides

the silken curls,

beside the long, slim legs,

besides…

beside the svelte shoulders,

beside the slender waist,

besides…

beside the curving hips,

beside the rounded breasts,

beside the limpid voice

besides...

beside the floral ears,

beside the supple arms,

beside the curving back.

Besides beside myself

beside you,

there's none beside you.

16.Between

the bills, paid and unpaid,

between the dishes, washed and unwashed,

between the rubbish, collected and scattered,

between the love-notes, written and unwritten,

between the papers, filed and heaped,

between the clothes, strewn and hung,

between the poems, written and unwritten

between the prayers, said and unsaid,

between the friendships, keen and lapsed,

between the promises, kept and broken,

a man lives

17.She's gone

into the beyond,

beyond the window,

beyond the fence,

beyond the border,

beyond the barrier,

beyond the ditch,

beyond the check-point,

beyond the watch-tower

of the gulag

she left of life.

18.by

hook

by crook,

by stealth,

by night,

by day,

bye-bye.

By cheek,

by jowl,

by law,

by luck

by force,

bye-bye.

By any means,

by fair means,

or foul,

by proxy,

by post,

bye-bye.

19.For

the ab-rippling champion,

a Second’s second;

for the prophetic intellect,

a lifetime’s lifeline:

for the dazzling magician,

a wily while;

for the epoch-making president,

a moment of moment;

for the problem-solver,

an instant instance.

For lovers’ pleasure

a longer minute;

for their pain,

a shorter hour.

20. from,

postcards from,.

packets from

the past

from,

people from

places from

spaces, from

the lads

from

morning from

night from

home from

work, from

exit from

entry from

someone special

from

birth from

death.

from bad

from worse

good postman

deliver us.

21 Break in,

she's gone.

Drop in,

she's gone.

Get in,

she's gone.

Push in,

she's gone.

Take in,

she's gone.

Muck in,

she's gone.

Tuck in,

she's gone.

Share in,

she's gone.

Run in,

she's gone.

Give in,

she's gone.

Throw in,

she's gone.

Shut in,

she's gone.

Turn in.

22.Inside

a thimble,

inside a pinhead,

inside a crumb,

inside a crystal,

inside a grain,

inside an atom,

inside a nucleus,

inside a quark,

inside a muon,

inside a Boson,

inside a Bosun's mate,

the physicists

invite us

to tea, at time T 1

and time T 2, too.

23.You're

on

it,

on top,

on task,

on time,

on your marks,

on your honour,

on your oath,

on your word.

You’re

on your own.

24. They're onto us.

onto our prints,

onto our past,

onto our identities,

onto our lifestyle,

onto our habits,

onto our methods,

onto our disguise,

onto our lives,

onto our gestures,

onto our hopes,

onto our pleasure.

We're onto the front cover at last!

25.Off

the cuff,

off white,

off licence,

off sales,

off colour,

pissed off.

Off the hook,

off beat,

off Broadway,

off season,

left off.

Off menu,

put off,

off topic

off duty,

off the wall

off centre,

struck off.

It's all a bit off

since you said

“It’s not that

I’m off you.”

and then

you went off.

26.Outside

the sun is shining.

Outside the people smile.

Outside, the bat hits the ball.

Outside, no-one argues.

Outside, the girls are pretty.

Outside, the food is cheap.

Outside, the buses are on time.

Outside, the politicians

do what the people want.

Outside, the police trust the poor.

Outside, the doctors like the dying.

Outside, the priests are praying...

outside what counts.

27.The

through-

train ran,

all through the night,

all through the day,

all through the nation,

through fair means and foul,

through sickness and health

through darkness and light,

through the thick and the thin,

through laughter and tears

Then it got through to me

that we were through

and then it was finally through.

28. Charm her

to…

press her to …

tell her to…

take her to…

bring her to…

get her to…

force her to…

Make her …

stop.