jokes:
their histories; who lay
manic with words,
fingers twined in each otherâs hair
(no closer) wasting nights and hours;
who chewed, as dry placebos,
those bitter seeds and flowers.
It is the moment.
We rise, and touch at last. And now
without pretence or argument,
fasting, and in our right minds,
go to our sacrament.
Acris Hiems
A letter from that pale city
I escaped from ten years ago
and no good news.
I carry it with me
devising comfortable answers
(the sickness, shall I say?
is not peculiarly yours),
as I walk along Beech Drive,
Church Vale, Ringwood Avenue
at eleven on a Tuesday morning
going nowhere.
A bony day, an invisible wind,
the sky white as an ambulance,
and no one in sight.
Friend, I will say in my letter –
since you call me a friend still,
whatever I have been – forgive me.
Rounding the next corner
I see a van that crawls along
beside the birch-trunks and pink pavements.
A handbell rings from the driver’s window:
he has paraffin for sale
and ought to do good business
now that we have power-cuts.
But the painted doors do not open.
The wind in the ornamental hedges
rustles. Nobody comes.
The bell rings. The houses listen.
Bring out your dead.
December Morning
I raise the blind and sit by the window
dry-mouthed, waiting for light.
One needs a modest goal,
something safely attainable.
An hour before sunrise
(due at seven fifty-three)
I go out into the cold new morning
for a proper view of that performance;
walk greedily towards the heath
gulping the blanched air
and come in good time to Kenwood.
They have just opened the gates.
There is a kind of world here, too:
on the grassy slopes above the lake
in the white early Sunday
I see with something like affection
people I do not know
walking their unlovable dogs.
Showcase
Looking through the glass showcase
right into the glass of the shelf,
your eye level with it, not
swerving above it or below,
you see neither the reflected image
nor the object itself.
There is only a swimming horizon,
a watery prison for the sight,
acres of shadowy green jelly,
and no way yet to know
what they support, what stands
in the carefully-angled light.
You take a breath, raise your head,
and see whether the case reveals
Dutch goblet, carved reliquary,
the pope’s elaborately-petalled rose
of gold-leaf, or the bronze Cretan
balanced on his neat heels,
and you look, drowning or perhaps
rescued from drowning; and your eyes close.
Over the Edge
All my dead people
seeping through the riverbank where they are buried
colouring the stream pale brown
are why I swim in the river,
feeling now rather closer to them
than when the water was clear,
when I could walk barefoot on the gravel
seeing only the flicker of minnows
possessing nothing but balance.
The Net
She keeps the memory-game
as a charm against falling in love
and each night she climbs out of the same window
into the same garden with the arch for roses –
no roses, though; and the white snake dead too;
nothing but evergreen shrubs, and grass, and water,
and the wire trellis that will trap her in the end.
An Illustration to Dante
Here are Paolo and Francesca
whirled around in the circle of Hell
clipped serenely together
her dead face raised against his.
I can feel the pressure of his arms
like yours about me, locking.
They float in a sea of whitish blobs –
fire, is it? It could have been
hail, said Ruskin, but Rossetti
‘didn’t know how to do hail’.
Well, he could do tenderness.
My spine trickles with little white flames.
Tokens
The sheets have been laundered clean
of our joint essence – a compound,
not a mixture; but here are still
your forgotten pipe and tobacco,
your books open on my table,
your voice speaking in my poems.
Naxal
The concrete road from the palace to the cinema
bruises the feet. At the Chinese Embassy
I turn past high new walls on to padded mud.
A road is intended – men with
their histories; who lay
manic with words,
fingers twined in each otherâs hair
(no closer) wasting nights and hours;
who chewed, as dry placebos,
those bitter seeds and flowers.
It is the moment.
We rise, and touch at last. And now
without pretence or argument,
fasting, and in our right minds,
go to our sacrament.
Acris Hiems
A letter from that pale city
I escaped from ten years ago
and no good news.
I carry it with me
devising comfortable answers
(the sickness, shall I say?
is not peculiarly yours),
as I walk along Beech Drive,
Church Vale, Ringwood Avenue
at eleven on a Tuesday morning
going nowhere.
A bony day, an invisible wind,
the sky white as an ambulance,
and no one in sight.
Friend, I will say in my letter –
since you call me a friend still,
whatever I have been – forgive me.
Rounding the next corner
I see a van that crawls along
beside the birch-trunks and pink pavements.
A handbell rings from the driver’s window:
he has paraffin for sale
and ought to do good business
now that we have power-cuts.
But the painted doors do not open.
The wind in the ornamental hedges
rustles. Nobody comes.
The bell rings. The houses listen.
Bring out your dead.
December Morning
I raise the blind and sit by the window
dry-mouthed, waiting for light.
One needs a modest goal,
something safely attainable.
An hour before sunrise
(due at seven fifty-three)
I go out into the cold new morning
for a proper view of that performance;
walk greedily towards the heath
gulping the blanched air
and come in good time to Kenwood.
They have just opened the gates.
There is a kind of world here, too:
on the grassy slopes above the lake
in the white early Sunday
I see with something like affection
people I do not know
walking their unlovable dogs.
Showcase
Looking through the glass showcase
right into the glass of the shelf,
your eye level with it, not
swerving above it or below,
you see neither the reflected image
nor the object itself.
There is only a swimming horizon,
a watery prison for the sight,
acres of shadowy green jelly,
and no way yet to know
what they support, what stands
in the carefully-angled light.
You take a breath, raise your head,
and see whether the case reveals
Dutch goblet, carved reliquary,
the pope’s elaborately-petalled rose
of gold-leaf, or the bronze Cretan
balanced on his neat heels,
and you look, drowning or perhaps
rescued from drowning; and your eyes close.
Over the Edge
All my dead people
seeping through the riverbank where they are buried
colouring the stream pale brown
are why I swim in the river,
feeling now rather closer to them
than when the water was clear,
when I could walk barefoot on the gravel
seeing only the flicker of minnows
possessing nothing but balance.
The Net
She keeps the memory-game
as a charm against falling in love
and each night she climbs out of the same window
into the same garden with the arch for roses –
no roses, though; and the white snake dead too;
nothing but evergreen shrubs, and grass, and water,
and the wire trellis that will trap her in the end.
An Illustration to Dante
Here are Paolo and Francesca
whirled around in the circle of Hell
clipped serenely together
her dead face raised against his.
I can feel the pressure of his arms
like yours about me, locking.
They float in a sea of whitish blobs –
fire, is it? It could have been
hail, said Ruskin, but Rossetti
‘didn’t know how to do hail’.
Well, he could do tenderness.
My spine trickles with little white flames.
Tokens
The sheets have been laundered clean
of our joint essence – a compound,
not a mixture; but here are still
your forgotten pipe and tobacco,
your books open on my table,
your voice speaking in my poems.
Naxal
The concrete road from the palace to the cinema
bruises the feet. At the Chinese Embassy
I turn past high new walls on to padded mud.
A road is intended – men with
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