The hawk moths.
Easter rain brings the hawk moth
large as a purse; abdomen as fat as a friar's finger.
Black velvet button eye, they hang
as sharp as jet fighters, as wrinkled as coats,
On every wall.
19/04/2006
Easter rain brings the hawk moth
large as a purse; abdomen as fat as a friar's finger.
Black velvet button eye, they hang
as sharp as jet fighters, as wrinkled as coats,
On every wall.
19/04/2006
Machicolation.
You might want to learn about this,
How we make a palace of the hovel of our joys.
The world keeps within its folds each treasured blueprint
and you will only see them spread in a passing movement:
How that child's face falls as you are revealed,
incapable of understanding imaginary spires
and drawbridges closing, barbicans of desire.
Just walls instead, and you riding naked before them,
lips smeared with ash, your mount angry with incomprehension
and a saddle hobbed, cruel beneath your thighs.
Enfiladed, oil and molten lead, bolts and arrows
invisible, sighing about you.
You'll easily counter it, of course, with your armour.
Your rigid, fibrous heart crashing in your chest.
27/02/2007
You might want to learn about this,
How we make a palace of the hovel of our joys.
The world keeps within its folds each treasured blueprint
and you will only see them spread in a passing movement:
How that child's face falls as you are revealed,
incapable of understanding imaginary spires
and drawbridges closing, barbicans of desire.
Just walls instead, and you riding naked before them,
lips smeared with ash, your mount angry with incomprehension
and a saddle hobbed, cruel beneath your thighs.
Enfiladed, oil and molten lead, bolts and arrows
invisible, sighing about you.
You'll easily counter it, of course, with your armour.
Your rigid, fibrous heart crashing in your chest.
27/02/2007
Penknife.
Last night a comet bleached our sky
I took a penknife and made three cuts
undid a seam to put the comet in
sliced a vein to dye its tail
and cut a twig
to prop that undeserving night
from where it had been taken
31/01/2007
Last night a comet bleached our sky
I took a penknife and made three cuts
undid a seam to put the comet in
sliced a vein to dye its tail
and cut a twig
to prop that undeserving night
from where it had been taken
31/01/2007
The Heron
The heron glide in on flannelmist dawn;
under the snout of darkness they whisper their contumacy.
By the sun they are camped in the breaking frost.
Unlike the ibis, that quizzical apothecary's clerk,
or the wistful moorhen,
the heron do not deign to linger, or to ask.
But raid moist soil, dead dams and trunks;
organise sentries, feed and shit and leave,
scribing their pendant traceries against the sky
with legs as comical as bent coathangers.
14/06/2006
The heron glide in on flannelmist dawn;
under the snout of darkness they whisper their contumacy.
By the sun they are camped in the breaking frost.
Unlike the ibis, that quizzical apothecary's clerk,
or the wistful moorhen,
the heron do not deign to linger, or to ask.
But raid moist soil, dead dams and trunks;
organise sentries, feed and shit and leave,
scribing their pendant traceries against the sky
with legs as comical as bent coathangers.
14/06/2006
The Sadness at the Heart of the Cake
Red laminex and zinc piping are not our 'chief concerns' here,
here in this kitchen of flies and yellow curling flypaper.
The dead are currants dotted in panettone.
A Methodist Ladies Cookbook on the bench
relates the dangers of a sadness
at the heart of the cake.
Who fails a cake?
Who leaves it, sighing, alone in a room at night?
Can the love of a cake be spurned?
In a corner of the room hums the deep
deep freeze. Cream sponges sleep within,
dreaming of spongy affairs, iced with comfort.
29/03/2007
Red laminex and zinc piping are not our 'chief concerns' here,
here in this kitchen of flies and yellow curling flypaper.
The dead are currants dotted in panettone.
A Methodist Ladies Cookbook on the bench
relates the dangers of a sadness
at the heart of the cake.
Who fails a cake?
Who leaves it, sighing, alone in a room at night?
Can the love of a cake be spurned?
In a corner of the room hums the deep
deep freeze. Cream sponges sleep within,
dreaming of spongy affairs, iced with comfort.
29/03/2007
Twelve frosts
Twelve frosts in a row and the new lambs are gone.
They lie in their special silence, where they had slept.
On their wool, a glistening amice signals them home.
The cold farmer stamps his feet, bangs his hands: "Jesus wept..."
Walking and counting I see the ewe, dead mid-parturition.
The blood-black birth sac like a burnt elbow bulges.
Her jaw is frozen open. This apparition
is enough, and enough: we begin our salvages.
Each skinny, knock-kneed corpse rattles into the tray,
out of reach of crow and fox and frost.
And mind. The ewe defeats me and will wait
for blunter fingers more used to loss.
In the cabin, turn key, and open throttle.
From the fenceline green parrots curl up from the wattle.
30/06/2006
Twelve frosts in a row and the new lambs are gone.
They lie in their special silence, where they had slept.
On their wool, a glistening amice signals them home.
The cold farmer stamps his feet, bangs his hands: "Jesus wept..."
Walking and counting I see the ewe, dead mid-parturition.
The blood-black birth sac like a burnt elbow bulges.
Her jaw is frozen open. This apparition
is enough, and enough: we begin our salvages.
Each skinny, knock-kneed corpse rattles into the tray,
out of reach of crow and fox and frost.
And mind. The ewe defeats me and will wait
for blunter fingers more used to loss.
In the cabin, turn key, and open throttle.
From the fenceline green parrots curl up from the wattle.
30/06/2006