Diwali, Manchester 2001 - by
I think of windows as I think of caves…
I think of windows as I think of caves…
Widowed of my own image
/ That shone from fellow faces
/ I watch from envious window
/ The men whose energies at morning…
There they are, widows of the professoriate
/ Tied to their frail routines, but not unfree
/ Wheeling their shopping zimmers on Market Street;
/ And…
We round the Brunel coast, in a train
/ crowded with bags and elbows. Tunnels gape
/ through mountains. Someone coughs. Now at sea:
/ the…
Remembering an Edinburgh neighbour
/
/
/ Descending her garden path
/ she turns, backtracks indoors
/ again, and into the front room
/ to straighten a…
Between the sunrise and me there’s a window. / So I greet my old friends the morning air / and…
A broken necklace of crofts
/ strewn across the sandstone floor
/ of the north Caithness coast
/ these sea-beat parishes where the fields
/ are…
As from the house your mother sees
/ You playing round the garden trees,
/ So you may see, if you will look
/ Through the…
Above the Crags that fade and gloom
/ Starts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat;
/ Ridged high against the evening bloom,…
A few more looks over
/ my breeze-polished shoulders
/ and I shall be home.
/
/ The spilled-over
/ window deepens with every gaze.
/ On the island
/ which incessantly…
Leaves turn sere and there are bings
/ from networks stretching in through the window:
/ you could tiptoe now among the stubby thumbs…
I had to get nearer the sky,
For the city was too full of rooms
And I can’t be content with a window.
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