Poetry

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…

“Dear wife, I don’t suppose you understand my cheerfulness these days with passion cooling, my love-songs of a bachelor, my boyish fooling, the way I lie so easy on my own side or rise to screw newspaper for the fire? Crooning over breakfast pans is all that I desire. Safely alive in the quiet light…

My eldest sister arrived home that morning In her white muslin evening dress. `Who the hell do you think you are Running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn’t enough bother With the world at war, if not at an end.’ My father was pounding the breakfast-table. `Those Yankees were touch…

Now that we’ve come to the end I’ve been trying to piece it together, Not that distance makes anything clearer. It began in the half-light While we walked through the dawn chorus After a party that lasted all night, With the blackbird, the wood-pigeon, The song-thrush taking a bludgeon To a snail, our taking each…

I am stretched out under the lean-to Of an old tobacco-shed On a farm in North Carolina. A cardinal sings from the dogwood For the love of marijuana. His song goes over my head. There is such splendour in the grass I might be the picture of happiness. Yet I am utterly bereft Of the…

I, too, have trailed my father’s spirit From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain Where he was born and bred, TB and scarletina, The farm where he was first hired out, To Wigan, to Crewe junction, A building-site from which he disappeared And took passage, almost, for Argentina. The mountain is coming down with hazel,…