words & pictures
I cleat the soil A soft black earth Strewn with flecks The frozen skin of mica Long since gone to dust Leave a mark like a cross A promised, graven treasure We span a gentling curve The distant water blinding There is a stone like a ship Defiantly sinking I think No one I know is buried here
The rain harangues Curtails the rags of afternoon To a kind of twilit comfort Of these few close held rooms You are in my sleeve Sate as other Sunday evenings Hesitant as a bird Crumpled as if you were already thrown away Like the stone the tailor threw A knit as camouflaging As any grass-thin shadows Your voice, close enough For doves to misconstrue Still, against the staccato dark Of shades rigged tight as seabird sails In any failing storm I don’t understand How suddenly you flew
This is the kind of note You should destroy after reading Scrabble pieces in a cup Spilled out across The worn parquetry of meaning Tear it from the book The ragged seam almost invisible, but Now the pages Never sit quite flat The teardrop bowing of lacuna A whistle elongated between Fingers placed uncouthly in the mouth Saliva wet Shrilling in that forest way Of sunlight and warning Decanting through the myrrh and honey branches A cat grows in sunshine Poached eggs, an insistent wind Left over from the barbarity of desert summer Small clouds dragged across the sky The eclipse almost fatal On thick toast for late breakfast Flour dusting The distance almost serene Between then and now Crumple, discard, forget Almost, once upon a time Someone died today
I can only imagine you turned into wood one of those silvered, slender trees now quite alone bent by ragged seasons shorn of leaves, and, extraneous branches the fallen, skeletal remains of life’s importunate sundial illegible but, in unquiet earth the marks deeply incised bark skinned away bone pale underneath a sail for a smile reaching from whence to whenever with the ruffled sigh of birds with knots for eyes on your carefully held limbs quietly watching
Sunday is the colour Of black and white TV No signal anymore Just the radiance Gnawing in your ears We still wear Last night’s epitaph In a too bright fervour Of distorted red and green A magnet to the cathode ray As if the laughable geometry Of neat lawns and backyard swimming pools Were the height where with A half-humbled prayer You could, (only sinking slightly through the screen) On that pocked and pristine surface, So easily walk
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
