We see them on the television-screen,
Each shrunk by distance to a manikin,
Lined up across the moor. They seem to lean
Against the raking wind as they begin
Their slow advance; at every pace they pause
And plunge into earth before their toes
Their sharpened sticks; then each of them withdraws
His pointed probe and lifts it to his nose.
We know that they are sniffing for a trace
Of carrion from the scabbard of the ground,
And somewhere in that God-forsaken place
The murdered children lie and must be found.

Not on the screen but being watched by it
The man and woman move about the room,
Lift ornaments and put them down, then sit,
Though only briefly, in the curtained gloom,
Until they rise again and climb the stairs
And prowl around the house. They do not speak
And neither sees the pain the other bears,
Nor understands that what they both now seek,
In dazed, somnambulistic wandering
From room to room, will never be revealed:
Forgiveness, that intolerable thing,
Which all their guilt and suffering will not yield.

Our teacher told us one day he would leave the school
And sail across a warm blue sea
To places he had only known from maps,
And all his life had longed to be.

The house he lived in was narrow and gray
But in his mind’s eye he could see
Sweet-scented jasmine clambering up the walls,
And green leaves burning on an orange tree.

He spoke of the lands he longed to visit,
Where it was never drab or cold.
And I couldn’t understand why he never left,
And shook off our school’s stranglehold.

Then half-way through his final term
he took ill and he never returned.
And he never got to that place on the map
Where the green leaves of the orange trees burned.

The maps were pulled down from the classroom wall;
His name was forgotten, it faded away.
But a lesson he never knew he taught
Is with me to this day.

I travel to where the green leaves burn,
To where the ocean’s glass-clear and blue,
To all those places my teacher taught me to love -
But which he never knew.

A seagull stood on my window-ledge today,
said nothing, but had a good look inside.
That was a cold inspection I can tell you!
North winds, icebergs, flash of salt
crashed through the glass without a sound.
He shifted from leg to leg, swivelled his head.
There was not a fish in the house – only me.
Did he smell my flesh, that white one? Did he think
I would soon open the window and scatter bread?
Calculation in those eyes is quick.
‘I tell you, my chick, there is food everywhere.’
He eyed my furniture, my plants, an apple.
Perhaps he was a mutation, a supergull.
Perhaps he was, instead, a visitation
which only used that tight firm forward body
to bring the waste and dread of open waters,
foundered voyages, matchless predators,
into a dry room. I knew nothing.
I moved; I moved an arm. When the thing saw
the shadow of that, it suddenly flapped,
scuttered claws along the sill, and was off,
silent still. Who would be next for those eyes,

I wondered, and were they ready, and in order?

The Frog Prince

I am a frog
I live under a spell
I live at the bottom
of a green well.

And here I must wait
Until a maiden places me
On her royal pillow
And kisses me
In her father’s palace.

The story is familiar
Everybody knows it well
But do other enchanted people feel as nervous
As I do? The stories do not tell,

Ask if they will be happier
When the changes come
As already they are fairly happy
in a frog’s doom?

I have been a frog now
For a hundred years
And in all this time
I have not shed many tears,

I am happy, I like the life,
Can swim for many a mile
(When I have hopped to the river)

And am for ever agile.

And the quietness,
Yes, I like to be quiet
I am habituated
To a quiet life,

But always when I think these thoughts
As I sit in my well
Another thought comes to me and says:
It is part of the spell

To be happy
To work up contentment
To make much of being a frog
To fear disenchantment.

Says, it will be heavenly
To be set free,
Cries, Heavenly the girl who disenchants
And the royal times, heavenly
And I think it will be.

Come then, royal girl and royal times,

Come quickly,
I can be happy until you come
But I cannot be heavenly,

Only disenchanted people

Can be heavenly.

The Romans in Britain
(A history in 40 words)

The Romans gave us aqueducts,
fine buildings and straight roads,
where all those Roman legionaries
marched with heavy loads.

They gave us central heating,
good laws, a peaceful home …
then after just four centuries
they shuffled back to Rome.

Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.

Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with rosins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.

It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder’s ache
A boy’s hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.

In the Meat-Safe

There is a functional greyness
where the banal, but unusual,
has found a graceless permanence
that only the odd can admire.
Those collectors of cigarette cards
and worthless believe-it-or-not facts,
are the antiquarians of corroded
appliances who worship a dullness
as lonely as the fattest man in the world.

Solemn gaberdines, they cherish
the swear of broken wirelesses,
goose-pimples on zinc canisters,
pre-war electric razors, sticks
of worn shaving soap, bakelite
gadgets, enemas, ration cards,
contraceptive coils that once fed
safe passions in colourless rooms
chilled by utility furniture.

Most of all they delight in
the stubble that grows on dead chins.
Recording their drab histories
in back issues of Exchange & Mart,
they swap this confidence – that,
in the cheap hell of scarlets’ accents
twittering in faded movies,
someone will sing of tinned kippers
and an ultimate boredom.

The Ancients of the World

The salmon lying in the depths of Llyn Llifon
Secretly as a thought in a dark mind,
Is not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd
Who tells her sorrow nightly on the wind.

The ousel singing in the woods of Cilgwri,
Tirelessly as a stream over the mossed stones,
Is not so old as the toad of Cors Fochno
Who feels the cold skin sagging round his bones.

The toad and the ousel and the stag of Rhedynfre,
That has cropped each leaf from the tree of life,
Are not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd,
That the proud eagle would have to wife.

Late February

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun. Now children,

stiffened by winter

and dressed, somehow,

like old men, mutter

and bend to the work

of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;

by five o’clock

the chill of sundown,

darkness, the blue TVs

flashing like storms

in the picture windows,

the yards gone gray,

the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off

across the cornfields

staked for streets and sewers,

the body of a farmer

missing since fall

will show up

in his garden tomorrow,

as unexpected

as a tulip.

‘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 to the next…
Unburdened, my body grows
featureless. I could disappear in water,
be perfectly matched to grassland.
Every tree
is stripped and life goes on underground;
even the telephone’s in hibernation.

I shall be here, of course,
seeing the season out from my fireside chair,
sometimes bringing apples down from the loft
or walking to church. If 1 should stray,
how would you ever find me?-
a pallid silhouette
on a clear road, like any refugee.’