Poetry

We were walking through the shadows of the Adirondacks. I saw so clearly that unfamiliar country, our sudden friendship. You said it couldn’t be that way again, walking that field, the small hands of birch leaves fluttering in the still line of sunset. The one night without a moon seems now the end of summer….

After Gerard Dillon Across the black lake Two figures row their boat With slow, leaning strokes. The grind of their rowlocks Is rhythmic as a heartbeat. Seven stooks stand In a moonwashed field — Seven pillars of gold — While beyond, two haystacks Are tied down to the earth. Three lean cattle munch The heavy…

Susan, whose father is dead, is thinking as she waits for the conversation between her mother and me to end: Why didn’t he die instead of my father? Why should his daughter have a father and not my father’s daughter? Must I from now on feel as if absent in myself, where my father reigned…

Dying, the salmon heaves up its head in the millstream. Great sores ring its gills, its eyes, a burning rust slowly corrodes the redgold skin. Great river king, nearby the Nore pours over foaming weirs its light & music, endlessly dissolving walls into webs of water that drift away among slow meadows. But you are…

I am sorry, she would say. That’s all right, I would murmur. She stood with her back towards me, my nose nearly touching. The train lurched to the right, giving me the space to breathe in freely, and I waited for the swing back when I would have to lift her from my chest, with…

Her long straight uncombed tangled tresses and miscellaneous modern dresses and double chin and sloppy carriage led to her being called a baggage, while he was an outstanding figure somewhat declined in shape and vigour but proud. The Baggage and the Toff: these two were star turns, nothing put them off. He muttered, “Mutton dressed…

A long time since the last scream cut short — Then an unnatural silence; and then A natural silence slowly broken By the shearwater, by the sporadic Conversation of crickets, the bleak Reminder of a metaphysical wind. Ages of this, till the report Of an outboard motor at the pier Fractures the dream-time, and we…

1 In nineteen sixty, in July a husband made his young wife cry. Mr Cordelia, plain and true, God help the poor bitch marries you, your truth that lacks the warmth of lies, the decency to compromise. Watch him this dull and windy day, the seventh of their holiday. There’s been a row, he runs…

She learned again so soon How the body is subdued To all the laws that rule The acorn’s fall and the erosion of tall cliffs. Like one borne away in a dance and veiled She dreamed of a high house with shining floors Where they squatted over stoves And well-shod women held breath in the…