There are so many, and each oneIts own. But why this, and this still?Was there a sign? Perhaps justThe ancient, utter silence, a hawkHanging upon emptiness aloneBetween the cyclopean cliffs.Leaving the quay, the rusty steamer,The narrow, huddled, whitewashed street,We scrambled upward to the sky.Upon the crest a monasteryHewn from salt, and in the hills beyondA […]
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal
All that night / it rained, and I traced my mistakes / up and down his spine.
Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma
/ fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an
/ it’s November. Christmas is close. Av been
/ away bit…
The night I got grave dust on my hands after dusting off my mother’s grave / I was lent a…
‘They make so little difference, the brass, / the tears. Can’t you leave us be?’
/ …
My Lute, bee as thou wast when thou didst grow
/ With thy greene Mother in some shadie Grove,
/ When immelodious Windes but…
in memory of my grandfather
/ (after Schubert’s piano sonata in C minor D958)
/
/
/ Hammer-blows ring on a hull in dry-dock
/ then dazzling sparks…
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
/ The lark’s is a clarion-call,
/ And the blackbird plays but…
Where is the real bazaar?
/ I want to buy an eyeful of kindness.
/ I want to dress my soul in hyperbole.
/ There’s a…
