Poetry

     You and you my masters Though you have told me exactly what to do Are now no longer wanted, I cannot bother To imitate your actions nor your heroes —John Cornford At least we were all well read Those books on barricades tear gas the wars civil Or world won in the name of any…

Did you see the modest girl who was ravished by young Neil on a sunny day on top of a hill: and no one at all near at hand but a young child who could not walk. Pity O King I wasn’t his, I wouldn’t have uttered a cry or shout though he would have…

I wish I could walk deep into a field of spiked wheat reaching my waist and not ask that question, where the sun laces my chest with its indifferent heat, and the sky seems only a backdrop for sharp birds that tuck their wings and glide, where each step pops crickets into quick arcs like…

There is no Simple circumstance, As when a boy hiding In a closet Beside a manikin swoons In the mist of A grandmother’s sachet. The crooked White sticks of the legs And arms bent around Him, as he imagines He is older, Standing in a wooded field, The beads of lavender Rolling In the yellow…

Sometimes I see the schoolmaster on the boat that is shiny with brine and comes from Asia. He is the Ancient Mariner and his finger jabs at a pamphlet soaked with salt, the words running away from back to front, the albatross outstretched, its eyes glazing. The rickshaws arrive at the wedding, with the dead…

Wanting leads to worse than oddity. The bones creak like bamboo in wind, and strain toward a better life outside the body, the life everything has that isn’t human. Feel the chair under you? What does it want? Does lust bend it silly like a rubber crutch? Tell a tree about the silky clasp of…

She re-enters her life the way a parachutist re-enters the coarser atmosphere of earth, exchanging the sensual shapes of clouds for cloud-shaped trees rushing to meet her, their branches sharp, their soft leaves transitory. She notices smells, the scent of pines piercing the surface of memory— that dark lake submerged in pines in which her…

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…