Kingdom When the kingdom falls apart the turning leaves will perform acrobatics, when the kingdom falls apart it will resemble a fancy dress party with skeletons and ghosts. When the kingdom falls apart it will be on a Wednesday morning, heavy rain, thick white cloud and a light that is particular to the time of […]
Out in the Yard
Out in the Yard The terrible elephant paws at the ground like a new, drunk kitty. But it’s normal to be thrown out of parties, I say. Just don’t outstay your welcome. But what’s a caprioska without lime? We make similar mistakes, the elephant and I. We play good cop bad cop in the afternoons. […]
A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House 1655-60
(after an artwork by Samuel Van Hoogstraten) How we like this eavesdropping with alternating eyes, and how he planned just what we’d see from either side. The dog would always be looking at us, the cat, arching its back, and the conspiratorial busts were above all this, either fixed or floating, depending on where you […]
Three Poems
Ode to a Magnolia Tree magnolia denudata Impatient as always, you blossom in the cold March air, even before your leaves have set: impetuous hostage to late frosts, the unfinished business of winter – but what do you care, you want to cut free, feel the sun on your face, to flaunt your big creamy […]
Two Poems
THE MIDDLE AGES We were tipping over like aging trees, our roots rising, shaggy with dirt. Had we missed the storm that did the damage? What had lifted us into brittle clock hands, whittled us into slivers, rocked our boats over into murky numbness? Were we not soldiers in the active army, were we not […]
Five Poems
Horae Solitariae One lady, I recall, the relict perhaps of an insolvent rake, would sit and mutter in a temper out of keeping with her age. I saw her once, and others of the damned, take shelter under the same tree from the rain. So anxious to impress, none said a word while overhead the […]
Four Poems
A Lollipop for E.P. Stuck a Chupa Chup into the ground Beside the grave of Ezra Pound Then jumped aboard the vaporetto To lose myself in the Jewish ghetto Looking for the synagogue That kept moving in the Venice fog Like an apparition in the crowd Where Jews were sometimes allowed. […]
Three Poems
Key To A Map The stammering footpaths pull your eye across the dyslexic geometry of fields, around blue chip meres and spilling woods. A séance tap of dead lanes turning up as potato cobbles under the plough or leaping the M6 levee between hamlets and barns. All day the fast lane hums with ghost herdsmen, […]
Three Poems
Guitar, Hanga Roa, Easter Island Eight-stringed and night-long strummed, you prove yourself a necessary accompaniment on these longest of evenings. Bigger than a fishscale, smaller than the sky, how do your songs describe you? Wider than a sardine, narrower than the sea. Sing to us of how, in this world of untimely things, a man […]
Two Poems
Nostalgia I too lived somewhere. Life had shape I dream of now: journals and Schweppes, candles stubbed in empty bottles of wine, a painted plank on two wrapped bricks lined with midnight blue vials of liniment and balms for her pulverulent arm skin, mornings spent in the afternoons reading L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune. I […]
Two Poems
Rouen The sky is milk in a late Corot at the Beaux Arts. Khaki and mustard reeds fringe a cackling stream. A peasant with a basket in her arms walks out of wetlands that part for her. When the sun comes out, the volume of the crowd appears to rise as if light were sounded. […]