In The Poetry

Idling

The way waves fold into themselves, sigh, then
play themselves out high on the foreshore,

a man draws and redraws the crescent contours
of the salt-woman he loves to draw to love.

Note from the Outside

Here are busy streets of fish,
dead tower-blocks squatted by gulls.

When they dropped me off at the wood’s edge
I was stammered by green,
I was torn to rags by the silence.
I walked like a bent pin,
stubbing my toes on the emptiness.

Remember that library book about the ocean?
You should see the night sky:
its buoys and [...]

As a child my primary fantasy was living in the rain forest as an adult – I loved rain so much and I think it was an altogether sensual experience. I remember herding goose bumps sitting on my grandmother’s porch with a blanket and watching a storm approach and letting the chill go up my [...]

My wife and I went on a funicular railway from Lake Como to Brunate, and this is what happened.

Halfway up the mountain it stops. Slips back.
Judders. Slips again. ‘Scheisse!’ screams a Fraulein,
‘Scheisse!’ Word for word, you think exactly
the same in English. Two little maids in white dresses,
toting Prada bags, think the same in Japanese.
The wind [...]

This is a poem called ‘Wulf’, which is in fact a loose translation of an Anglo-Saxon poem, and the speaker in it is a woman

Wulf

1
They take it from me:
in the manner
of a gift

if danger moves in the earth
is the life given
is it love between us

2
Wulf: on that island
- I on this other

shut into fens, a [...]