| A bench seat on the window ledge, recessed in thick old walls.
We watch through small square panes with wood cross frames
As darkness falls.
Down across the raindamp twilight of the square
Horses shuffle, sack-sheath shod,
Scuffle shiny cobbles.
Peckwater Quad.
Breath snorts up through heavy air.
Mermaid: take your chances.
Light from library windows pales the mist and glances
Sparkling ships. Captains wait.
Ready straining sails.
Canterbury Gate.
Above the secret harbour, in our room, we think we guide
Through textures of a heart that touches stars
A life long tide.
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January 1983, Christ Church, Oxford. I returned early after Christmas, and, staying with a friend, it seemed as though we had the whole of Christ Church to ourselves. We looked out of an upstairs window in Peckwater Quad and we saw ships in the quadrangle. |
Arctic water
Sadness settles
Like a fine slow rain of silt.
Hearts fold away
With the sound of a falling leaf.
Cuts scar burns char death tests faith.
Anonym, Anima, Fatwah, Fate, Fatality.
Life soars
On snowflake wings; life
Like a flower
Draws colour from strange dark things. |
Cats
Then were the curious dream when has
break black sad place.
Mischievous cat give must soon come from
care sense of grace.
Suffer how beautiful
here cool best wonderful
Quiet like everything
sleep feel is light.
Feline be. |
Greenland
Here are the bones of the Earth laid bare
Swept sheer strike by the slant of frozen snow.
Each thing turns to the centre at the end
Returns from the flesh to the heart and the life below.
And here is man dissociate from space
Between opposing prayers for solitude and grace.
Lord protect us, bring us near
The time when all things shall be clear. |
Northern Lights, Greenland
Ice burns with a pale green flame
Rising with a whisper to carve its name
In the fast flowing fluid of the sky.
Light falls with a long soft sweep
Through a star-strewn ocean dark and deep
To the ice-covered earth where we lie.
Geese turn to the false-lit dawn
Like hopes and prayers and secrets sworn
To be kept in the heart till we die.
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Goose Street Car Park
I live near the Goose Street car park.
Where the gas works used to be.
This is rain country, with short, cool summers.
We don’t grow oranges here.
Before people, a glacier a mile deep
Covered everything for a thousand miles.
Snow fell last night.
When it felt the first, soft, silent, falling flakes
Did the ground remember the mile-deep ice?
Those prison years must have started the same way.
Oranges don’t have fears as old
Or memories as long and cold as that.
(This was "prompted writing"...
follow this link to see the context!)
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The Lottery Ticket
Unclaimed.
Framed.
Bought it
Before I thought it
Through.
My wife smiled, too.
Didn’t want to win it
Then never know which friends were true. |
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Almeria, Venice and Long Island
It doesn't rain a lot
In southern Spain there's not
Much fear of rust
But Almerian dust
Is salty like the sea and must
Eventually rot
Your buried dreams.
Ephemerality and climate change are major themes.
Not so much preoccupied with health
As terrified of death (debts)
The agents at the Lido hedge their bets
Against their wealth
And mortgage summer lets (yes, let's)
Against their rentals at the coast.
The equities look solid but the pension fund is toast.
The Belgians on their bicycles
Ride quickly through the woods.
The Frenchmen with their frying pans
Make tempting sweets and puds.
Italians with their ink pads
Stamp passports with great glee,
But Jews from Nazi Germany
In terror had to flee.
The Russians in their furry hats
Bring snow in on their boots.
The English, staying quite aloof,
Take tea in pinstriped suits.
The Welshmen in their valleys
Dig coal and round up sheep,
But kids in Northern Ireland
Are too afraid to sleep.
These are the songs
That I sing to my girls,
As I tie pretty ribbons
Into their curls.
These are the stories
I tell to my sons,
When they play with toy soldiers
and rubber-band guns.
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Notebooks
Broken pieces
As the world expands
Fall from the sky
Into my hands.
Bits of places
From different lands
All held together
With rubber bands.
Words
Words, like bricks,
(De)construct image(ination) into form;
(Re)create constructive inclination
As the norm.
Solheimi’s house
This is his knife. This is his plate.
This is the table where he ate.
This is his chair. This is his bed.
These are the books that Solheimi read.
Solheimi’s brushes, Solheimi’s paint.
The oil is dry, the colours are faint.
Solheimi’s pictures on Solheimi’s walls.
Solheimi’s bird from the cliff-top calls.
This is the garden. This is the brook,
Where Solheimi wrote his famous book.
Late in the evening, when the wind is strong,
You can still hear the sound of Solheimi’s song.
Because this is Solheimi’s house.
The walls are high. The path is steep,
The lake is dark and the water is deep.
This is the room where visitors slept.
When their memories faded, Solheimi wept.
Here is the stone, small and round,
Like a flower-jewelled egg, that Solheimi found.
One of his guests had left it behind,
And Solheimi had kept it, to hold her in mind.
This is the moss that covers the stones,
This is the sun that picks at the bones,
This is the rain that falls from the clouds,
That drape the hills like funeral shrouds.
These are the tears that Solheimi shed,
This is the blood that Solheimi bled.
This is the hope that Solheimi lost;
Solheimi’s winter, Solheimi’s frost.
This is Solheimi’s house.
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Starlight, snowflake, dewdrop, shower.
Sunshine, rainbow, lovely flower
Fridge Magnet Poems
(My set has 100 words for cat lovers (!))
Perfect affection,
Companion, friend,
Fat, soft, cunning cat.
Then were the curious dream when has
break black sad place.
Mischievous cat give must soon come from
care sense of grace.
Suffer how beautiful
here cool best wonderful
Quiet like everything
sleep feel is light.
Feline be.
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Think about when grey fish leap and dream.
Can my bold stroke make more of life than this?
They break to chase black light with every sense
That calico night could colour by a kiss.
Think about Fish. Sleek fur.
Too long bold gift. They purr.
Or meow and kiss
And chase a life like this. |
Other Poems
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Kender du lyden af en knusende hjerte?
Det er som lyden af en blad, faldende i vand,
Eller som en spurv pa sneen.
. |
Do you know the sound of a heart breaking?
It is like the sound of a leaf falling into water,
Or like a sparrow on the snow |
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Treasures
I caught a falling snowflake,
And put it in a box,
To keep with my collection
Of stamps and coins and rocks.
But when I went to look at it
I found that it was gone.
In it’s place a tiny jewell
Like a teardrop shone.
But as I watched the teardrop shrank,
Dissolving in the air,
And by the time I shut the box,
There was nothing there.
I have a tiny fragment of tomorrow.
It’s like a long thin grape.
I keep it in a small blue box,
So it cannot escape
However much it twists and bends
And tries to change its shape.
I watch it.
Like a banana watches an ape.
Journal
Broken pieces, as the world expands,
Fall from the sky into my hands.
Bits of places from different lands,
All held together with old rubber bands.
The fabric of the sky is wearing thin.
The light of heaven twinkles
Through a thousand tiny holes.
God builds clouds,
To keep his children warm,
But still the sound of starlight chills their souls.
Heaven bites, Hell sings.
Life like a snowbird soars
On snowflake wings.
Life like a flower draws
Colour from strange dark things.
The gates of Hell are wide,
And stand ajar to welcome passers by
Who may be unaware of what must lie inside.
The timely death that rescues from a savaging old age
Must bear the grief of witnesses.
The timely death that quenches life before it leaves the womb
Must bear the parents’ ignorance.
Cuts scar,
Burns char,
Death tests faith.
Anonym, Anima,
Fatwah, Fate, Fatality.
Death tests life.
Anne Donelly burned to death when she was five,
And only she was there.
Our loss is like the rain
On a cricket Sunday afternoon in late September
That sits on window panes, making them opaque,
Like a dead young child’s face
At the mercy of a love she can't control
Like an ocean at the mercy of the tide.
And then the years of longing,
Like a plague
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Now you are gone
Now you are gone,
Sadness pours
Through every window in my heart,
Like an ocean
Rushing in to a sinking ship.
Longing overwhelms me
Like a flood.
Now you are gone,
Sadness pours
Through every window in my heart,
Like an ocean
Rushing in to a sinking ship.
It’s human nature to look back
With fondness down the winding track
That brought us here from long ago
And leads to somewhere we don’t know.
It’s human nature to take fright
At every dimming of the light
That speaks to us of time run short
And bids us give each day more thought.
And when the moment duly comes,
When we each hear our marching drums,
Let no one say we were not warned
That each day lost is one day mourned.
A Question
Are we invested with some special power
Some fragment of that shining hour
When we were first conceived
When God first drew us on some cosmic board
People of whom He would be Lord
If we believed?
The Angel that God sent
The fabric of the sky is wearing thin.
The light of heaven twinkles
Through a thousand tiny holes.
God weaves clouds,
To keep his children warm,
But still the sound of starlight chills their souls.
“We’re really very sorry,
But I’m sure you understand.
We simply didn’t know that you were here.
I can see that you exist,
But the guidelines do insist,
That those who are not listed live in fear.”
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Ice like fire bites.
Ice like a bluebird sings.
Ice like a snowbird soars
On snowflake wings.
Ice like starlight burns.
Ice like an ocean sighs.
Ice like a flower draws
Colour from arctic skies.
Ice like tears melts.
Ice like a mountain dreams.
Ice like an angel scorns
Our human schemes.
This is Solheimi’s house (alternative).
These are his spoons, this is his plate,
This is the table where he ate.
This is his chair. This is his bed.
These are the birds that Solheimi fed.
This is his toilet, grubby and bare
These are the socks that he used to wear.
These are the biscuits he used to eat,
And this is the smell of Solheimi’s feet.
Out in the garden, Solheimi’s sheep,
A look-out on the cliff-top keep.
And there is the lake where Solheimi sat.
He picked his nose, but rarely spat.
This is the rain that falls from the sky,
Preventing the guests from remaining dry.
And this is the river, smelly and deep,
Preventing the people from falling asleep.
Be careful with my heart.
It has been broken
And the thread that binds it is not strong.
This way sadness lies
like snow
inside my heart.
The frost is hard
outside
and inside hers.
Balmedie
Here is a man of long ago places,
Here is a man of far away times;
A man who has longings
outweighed by his fears,
And virtues
outweighed by his crimes.
St. George's Day Off
The pale flag forgets
Until tomorrow damsels in distress.
The burning land
Covers me for once.
I am the earth
That will not burn
And that can wait
Until tomorrow
Dragons have their day.
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The very first time I heared your name
It flickered in the air like a candle flame
And it burned our lips as we passed it around like a game.
The very first time I heared you speak,
My head felt dizzy and my knees went weak,
You were saying you were leaving, and the rest of my life seemed bleak.
The very first time I saw your face
It was a poor little copy in a crowded place
Pretending to be cow-hide when really it was lace,
Shouting “hey, look at me, I’m part of the human race”.
Then I saw the ocean for the every first time,
And accused the world’s authors of a terrible crime,
I caught my first snowflake falling from the sky,
And told the world’s photographers they all deserved to die.
The very first time you looked at me,
My heart beat faster and I spilled my tea,
I bought myself a drink and decided that I’d better have three.
The very first time you held my hand,
I knew that I was dreaming but began to understand,
I would wake upon the ocean, and would never again see land.
He likes to believe
He’s a man of the wilds,
A man of the mountains and trees.
He likes to believe
He’s a man with a vision,
Who sees what no one else sees.
In fact he’s a man
just like any other,
A man with a father and mother.
He’s a man with a heart,
And a head full of dreams,
That he likes to believe he can smother.
Anne Donelly burned to death when she was five,
And only she was there.
Sadness settles
Like a fine slow rain of silt.
Hearts fold away
With the sound of a falling leaf.
We are creatures of the sea floor.
Birds swim
Like dolphins through the sky.
Sadness pours
Through every window in my heart
Like an ocean
Rushing in to a sinking ship.
Longing overwhelms me like a flood.
Cuts scar burns char death tests faith.
Anonym, Anima, Fatwah, Fate, Fatality.
Life soars
On snowflake wings
Life, like a flower,
Draws colour from strange, dark things.
Timely deaths quench; bear ignorance and grief.
Weighed down with locks and chains
Memories
In a vault won’t float.
Like an anchor.
And the ocean howls when it dreams.
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