Today, a multiplicity of

names discovered

as the shadows

lengthened across the day.

Fox watcher.

Worm finder.

Trench digger.

Mattock wielder.

Revealer of hidden

suns.

Unearther of buried

histories.

Here are secret twists of

quenched metals put

deep into the soil,

awaiting kindly eyes,

forgiving hands.

An index finger wound with

green twine set towards the

assignation of a

straight line.

I can see rows of over-ripe

raspberries threaded 

through the

future of these sunken

wooden boards.

An investment in bent 

backs, heavy boots,

exposed forearms

and the steady comfort

of a well 

proportioned

rake.

The evening advances, then withdraws again

Leaving our cups and books like islands on the floor.

We are drifting, you and I,

As far from another as the young heroes

Of these two novels we have just laid down.

For that is happiness: to wander alone

Surrounded by the same moon, whose tides remind us of ourselves,

Our distances, and what we leave behind.

The lamp left on, the curtains letting in the light.

These things were promises. No doubt we will come back to them.

I took my life and threw it on the skip, 

Reckoning the next-door neighbours wouldn’t mind 

If my life hitched a lift to the council tip 

With their dry rot and rubble. What you find 

With skips is - the whole community joins in 

Old mattresses appear, doors kind of drift 

Along with all that won’t fit in the bin 

And what the bin-men can’t be fished to shift 

I threw away my life, and there it lay 

And grew quite sodden. ‘What a dreadful shame, ‘ 

Clucked some old bag and sucked her teeth. ‘The way 

The young these days…. no values……. me, I blame….. ‘ 

But I blamed no-one. Quality control 

Had loused it up, and that was that. ‘Nough said 

I couldn’t stick at home, I took a stroll 

And passed the skip, and left my life for dead. 

Without my life, the beer was just as foul, 

The landlord still as filthy as his wife, 

The chicken in the basket was an owl, 

And no one said: ‘Ee, Jim-lad, whur’s thee life? ‘ 

Well, I got back that night the worse for wear, 

But still just capable of single vision; 

Looked in the skip, my life- it wasn’t there! 

Some bugger’d nicked it - WITHOUT my permission. 

Okay, so I got angry and began 

To shout, and woke the street. Okay, OKAY, 

AND I was sick all down the neighbour’s van 

AND I disgraced myself on the par-kay 

And then…. you know how if you’ve had a few 

You’ll wake at dawn, all healthy, like sea breezes, 

Raring to go, and thinking: ‘Clever you! 

You’ve got away with it’ and then, Oh Jesus, 

It hits you. Well, that morning, just at six 

I woke, got up and looked down at the skip. 

There lay my life, still sodden, on the bricks, 

There lay my poor old life, arse over tip. 

Or was it mine? Still dressed, I went downstairs 

And took a long cool look. The truth was dawning. 

Someone had just exchanged my life for theirs. 

Poor fool, I thought - I should have left a warning. 

Some bastard saw my life and thought it nicer 

Than what he had. Yet what he’d had seemed fine. 

He’d never caught his fingers in the slicer 

The way I’d managed in that life of mine. 

His life lay glistening in the rain, neglected, 

Yet still a decent, an authentic life. 

Some people I can think of, I reflected 

Would take that thing as soon as you’d say Knife. 

It seemed a shame to miss a chance like that 

I brought the life in, dried it by the stove. 

It looked so fetching, stretched out on the mat 

I tried it on. It fitted, like a glove. 

And now, when some local bat drops off the twig 

And new folk take the house, and pull up floors 

And knock down walls and hire some kind of big 

Container (say, a skip) for their old doors. 

I’ll watch it like a hawk, and every day 

I’ll make at least - oh - half a dozen trips. 

I’ve furnished an existence in this way. 

You’d not believe the things you’d find on skips.

Cold now.

Close to the edge. Almost

unbearable. Clouds

bunch up and boil down

from the north of the white bear.

This tree-splitting morning

I dream of his fat tracks,

the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,

blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,

handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time

we measure the love we have always had, secretly,

for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love

for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty

of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,

in the immeasurable cold,

we grow cruel but honest; we keep

ourselves alive,

if we can, taking one after another

the necessary bodies of others, the many

crushed red flowers.

When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming

Quietly as snow on the bare bough of bone,

My father brought me trout from the green river

From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland

Of stipple faded, as light shocked the brain;

They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,

A young god, ignorant of the blood’s stain.

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught   

in some moorings. I am always tying up   

and then deciding to depart. In storms and   

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide   

around my fathomless arms, I am unable   

to understand the forms of my vanity   

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder   

in my hand and the sun sinking. To   

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage   

of my will. The terrible channels where   

the wind drives me against the brown lips   

of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet   

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and   

if it sinks, it may well be in answer   

to the reasoning of the eternal voices,

the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

Orpheus


When I wrote of the women in their dances and 

      wildness, it was a mask,

on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,

it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,

fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone

      down with song,

it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from

      myself.
  

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory

of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued

      child

beside me among the doctors, and a word

of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,

the fragments join in me with their own music.

Dear K., there’s a mosquito stain

between the pages of your book, a streak

of platelets beside my index finger.

The broken microscopic cells have escaped

the hurly-burly of the wide aorta, the stark

unholy flow through veins and tubules.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mistake

anatomy for emotion. My heart is meat

and gristle, like Artaud’s: a simple

pump, it never falters. If I weep

it’s for the rocking chair, three knocks

embedded in the nursery wall.

On one window, I found instructions:

“Here, no cares invade, all sorrows

cease” in almost perfect iambs.

Forgive me. I tried to keep them

“far outside” but they marched right up

to my room. All month they’ve been waving

tenuous arms. Have you seen them?

What could I do but let them in

and let them rest in your favorite chair. Soon

they’ll disappear or I will. In the afternoons

(do you remember?) light falls

or spills, spills or falls through the amber

stained-glass windows. It lifts my spirits

but I’m still waiting for you to appear

at the edge of my bed with a message. Think

of the ruins I could have traveled to

by now, think of the days I’ve wasted

lying on the pink divan, a stand of hawthorns

blocking my view of the rose garden,

my American Beauty, already fully blown.

My tactic is to look at you

To learn how you are

Love you as you are

My tactic is to talk to you

And listen to you

And construct with words

An indestructible bridge

My tactic is to stay in your memory,

I don’t know how

Nor with what pretext

But stay within you

My tactic is to be honest

And know you are too

And that we don’t sell each other illusions

So that between us there is no curtain or abyss

My strategy instead is

Deeper and simpler.

My strategy is that some day

I don’t know how, nor with what pretext

That you, finally, need me.