The plane trees turn
Disillusioned leaves
Quite early this year
The Dutch elm bug is on his holidays
While we sneak out
To the dregs of seaside towns
A breeze, gull-hollow in the mouth
Of a tipped over flagon
The day has that wormed-through look
Of driftwood and premature age
The gulls flock
In that senescent, rough drawn game
Of wings unfolding
In hearts and crosses
Someone poured out petrol on the sea
Bursting when the sinking sun, dissolved
In match-flare quickness
Dragged down with waning hostility, a smoking sky
As if no-one, in the semi-dark, could still be inflamed
I know you know the stars are embers
There is a parenthesis somewhere here
Time will only take you so far
From the edge we see the remnant light
Why – I don’t know why
That died in self-effacement
A shoreline’s length ago
On the train you hold the waxed-paper cup
In two hands, careful, as if you caught
A butterfly
With seesaw determination, as the carriages shunt
At the points, where the rails diverge and intersect
In that clumsy, stagger back way
You always thought unnecessary
A summer cold is just past all sensible belief
(you say)
I think how you mantis, turn
The taut, wrung out cloth of your neck
Outside, the hard, enticing glint, as the river passes
When you return, careless this time
With another cup, held at a clumsy distance
Like the besmirched paw
Of a particularly embarrassing child
Shadows lifting from your back
I consider, the isthmus of your face
The changing half-moon light
Where the sea erodes
One day there will be
Nothing left (I think)
The way sometimes, in our peculiar distances
All details are effaced
But for today
When you tilt your head
To better catch the trip-trap of the rails
The silt of time
In the hawkish, estuarine rake
Marks out the familiar, negotiable terrain
If I only knew the legend
I would keep the map
But, instead, watch the run, of unevening colours
The roads becoming flood-torn
As the paper soaks
The spilt tea from the tray
The journey only ever takes us
This one way
Crumpling, with that mildly sneered distaste
We are lost
I get everything in footnotes –
Second-hand, used up
Meaning depleted
To a dull projectile weight
Damaging in impact
And sinister disreputation
That disguises elaborate architectures
In an image of itself, the ivy swallows
Shivering, in dark green exultation
The way a word evaporates
Spoken too often and too fast
In that aphasic staccato
Of unceasing railway cars
Crossing points and telegraph lines
In bird-like chitter-chatter
A name murmured on the phone
In hard magnified breaths
Nevertheless misunderstood
Irreducible as time-worn stones
With all the bold effacement
Of that immovable wisdom
