Poems
Trencrom Hill
I still believe in flying.
It’s a bluster of wind, which whitehorses up
sheer cliffs, powering over gorse and granite
across the purple moor, uphill, up stone:
it’s a one-off crack of time when gravity
inverts at precisely the instant
I jump: or it’s simply the force of my believing
which propels us, me kiteflying your big hand,
our blue macs ballooned like spinnakers
clutched by sky. I feel the cut of wings
blading my shoulders, watch all the envious souls
craning their necks, squinting at our lightness
which doesn’t last. I remember landing, easy limbs
unbroken on sprung turf, spread arms
quilling blue air, even my toes pink and pointed
inside tan Start-Rite sandals. You’re grounded
awkwardly, suddenly old and fallen,
nauseous and grey, as sky
swoops in and out of you
in sickening revolve,
leaving nothing but weightiness.
I wonder if you knew that, thanks to me,
you really did fly, once. I never told,
just went on trying solo, bruising
more each time. It doesn’t get easier,
that first step into dissolving sky, the going on
believing, even in mid air.
published in
Developing the Negative
Reworking It
’76: the hot summer everyone
still talks about, the summer
I haven’t quite left home. Somehow,
I’m weeding an onion field
by hand, alone.
Quite biblical, you observe; wheat, tares,
and stuff. I bet you left the roots behind,
just made it look okay. Like life, you say.
I’m eighteen, gawky, string and bone. The boys
are fields away, cutting turnips, slicing thumbs,
shirtless, shouting, shirking.
I crouch, uprooting. The church clock
precisely quarters every hour.
A parable, you yawn, all weeds and work,
unbearable slow time etc. These onion tears:
they’ve all been cried before.
My spine rages, throat congeals: there’s tilth
blearing each eyeball, grit between my teeth.
There must be other ways to tighter jeans,
the latest Wings LP.
Just tell it how it was, you say; cut metaphor,
cut psycho-whatsisname. Just fact.
And anyway, it’s years ago.
There was a drought, crops failed,
I weeded an onion field, left home,
met you, it rained, the weeds
grew back, that’s all.
published in
Developing the Negative
Generation Gap
I wasn’t old enough to use the mangle
until the spin-dryer was born, but knew by heart
how it would suck you in, finger by arm
by shout, squeeze you into a cartoon scream
then roll you out, bone dry,
white as a sheet.
published in
Developing the Negative
Counting Snowdrops
Newark Park, February 15th 2003
They say that from this valley
you can see no sign
of centuries of change.
No roads, pylons, poles or wires;
only, today, snowdrops, and you
four years changed and counting.
You falter, start again. I suggest estimation
guesswork. A really big number,
you say, like twenty-nine.
This valley, white, greened with frost
and heaped, horizoned with snowdrops; more
at every dawdling path and turn.
Today in the cities, twenty-nine
marching for peace; somewhere indoors
twenty-nine angry men in suits;
the other side of the world, twenty-nine
soldiers sweating in the desert,
and twenty-nine children
starving, close-up, on a TV screen.
Tomorrow, unchanged by all of these,
a really small number of men,
like two, will decide
for all the other twenty-nines.
published in
Developing the Negative
Requiem for Sideboard and Continuo
When there is nothing worth hearing
on Radio 3, he silences lame scales
from our laborious instruments,
and performs, solo, the sideboard.
All stops and drawers pulled out
fortissimo, he silver flutes
pearl-handled knives into harmonics,
ornaments black, chromatic wood
in counterpoint. Doors bellow
lungfuls of mouldy breath
and old white china sings
to his touch like ivory.
His blunt, staccato fingers
transpose, invert,
resolve, his heavy feet
metronome the floor. Stiff hinges
sustain vibrato, and carvings
intone ground bass, repeat
al fine …
Quieted and dusty now, the sideboard plays
diminished intervals, accidentals,
rests. Black gargoyles tongue
their brass rings silently, doors
are double-stopped and mute.
I imagine the headlines:
World premiere, the long lost score
of a neglected master …
and there, in the Albert Hall
our sideboard, polished
concert pitch plays Requiem
aeternum dona eis Domine.
published in
Diverting the Sea
The Weigh-In
She waits her turn, smiling
not speaking. It is a small step
onto truthful scales, a small hope
of being found wanting. The answer
needles her puffball watery thighs
her cushioned heart snugged
tight in its thermal case.
She buttons her wide coat
over her thin smile.
They wonder why she comes
whisper—if I were her—such legs—
such lard—such bread—until one day
with apologetic Polish vowels,
she tells of Siberia, where for years
her mother boiled roots, bound
six children with taut hope
above the earth. Sorry—
she says—now I not waste
even half a slice—Thin smiles
have buttoned up their silences.
Blessed from the supermarket aisles
she finishes each night her last
white crust: each day finds
miracles of more.
published in
Diverting the Sea
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