In The Poetry

This poem which is sort of grim at the end is an attempt to describe a kind of day very early in spring when we’re hopeful spring is coming but it darkens down and gets cold and damp at the end which is very much the way the poem happens.

Late February

The first warm day,
and [...]

This is from ‘Punch’s Day Book’

‘There are those who plan to die
blameless, open-handed, an unwritten letter.
We can’t aspire to that.
We lack the pure compulsion and the nerve.

The orchard’s harvested; the stoves are lit
to burn all winter; the house is steeped
in a musty odour of fruit.
Think how it is
to own nothing, to carry nothing
from one place [...]

The Pines of Rome

As ghosts of old legionaries, of the upright
farmers of that unbelievable republic,
the pines entail their roots among the rubble
of baroque and modern Rome.

Out by the catacombs they essay a contradiction,
clattering their chariot-blade branches to deny
the Christian peace, the tourist’s easy frisson,
a long transfiguration.

Look away from Agnes and the bird-blind martyrs,
the sheep of [...]

‘The Yellow Palm’ is a poem that really describes my experiences on Al-Rashid street in Baghdad when I was walking up and down Al-Rashid street in 1998. It’s a ballad, it’s an Audenesque kind of ballad with Audenesque rhymes.

The Yellow Palm

As I made my way down Palestine Street
I watched a funeral pass -
all the [...]

Songs of a Quiet Woman

lurching delicate as a snow queen down this street of greys
unfocussed exactly enough to miss the businessmen
goggling at my stocking deciding
(as I twitch primly into the tram seat my handbag
nestled on my lap like a puppy) deciding
this will be a day of minor survivals:
etching a bloody mouth in [...]

I don’t speak English. I don’t even speak the French I was taught. Shoes aren’t les chaussures here. They’re les goddesses, l’eau is la flotte, le vin is le pinard. My head is inside out; English used to be in deep and French outside. I’ve stopped translating. I don’t think ‘let’s go’ and turn it [...]

Getting Older

The first surprise: I like it.
Whatever happens now, some things
that used to terrify have not:

I didn’t die young, for instance. Or lose
my only love. My three children
never had to run away from anyone.

Don’t tell me this gratitude is complacent.
We all approach the edge of the same blackness
which for me is silent.

Knowing as much sharpens
my [...]

This poem is called ‘The Lammas Hireling’. It’s based on a story I heard when I was in Northern Ireland, out for a very late night walk, a local person pointed out a house he told me was where the local witches used to live, and in their tradition witches would change into hares, [...]

Fox

I needed fox Badly I needed
a vixen for the long time none had come near me
I needed recognition from a
triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes
fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail
I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through
I was in want of [...]

Dear Bryan Wynter

1

This is only a note
To say how sorry I am
You died. You will realise
What a position it puts
Me in. I couldn’t really
Have died for you if so
I were inclined. The carn
Foxglove here on the wall
Outside your first house
Leans with me standing
In the Zennor wind.

Anyhow how are things?
Are you still somewhere
With your long legs
And [...]