Shade

water taxis and candle-abra
meet in the bleaching sun
the tents flow with bunting
drinking monsoon and clinking trinkets
by the side of the river
walking on skates

A Black and White Film

There is a flickering of reel numbers
the electric whiteness of a screen more
numbers all of the expectation is in the breath
a man appears struggling across a white sqare
it is blindingly hot there is a crowd
in the distance he reels from side to side
has he been wounded? is he drunk? exhausted?
there is an auto shot of him from high up
tracking him as he staggers, more people,cycles
the sun swims up on the screen blindingly white
it is the end of the reel no music just the quick
click clicking of the projector half numbers nothing

For Two Players

Game for Two Players


Somewhere up there on the road
the road that leads to Rickmansworth,
or on the road that slants down
through a park that is always empty
except for the railway line
that also passes through it – there
where the Rock concerts are held,
near the stone fountains and the strange
concrete rectangles, where the nights
in Summer darken and lighten quickly,
you can play this game

with a tennis racquet and some old tennis
balls: one of you throws the ball
and the other hits it with the racquet
so high you can almost see it disappear –
you can watch it climbing in the sky,
you can see it growing so small,
and still see it until
you can’t see it anymore.


***

The Dream

Tonight I dream of changing my whole life -
I'll ditch my job, this home environment;
I'll change it all, and I'll impress my wife
By shouting in our first big argument
Since we became creatures of self-restraint,
Keeping soft angers and loud joys all pent -
And fears of being overheard? How quaint!
I'll roar like Tamburlaine, and when I'm spent

I'll watch her while her splendid fury grows
And sigh delightedly to see the red
In those fair cheeks so sweetly bellicose;
And then, as our great words subside, I'll bed

My prize - we'll tremble and laugh to feel
How our whole life has changed - and changed for real.

Like an Edward Hopper

Like an Edward Hopper

Being out of pain by nightfall and taking
a cheap room that overlooks the market,
foldaway or empty stalls, seats for drinking
and the sound of raised voices, clash of laughter
in the warm air – the night’s not over yet –
the sound of a game, wood counters clacking.
Life’s pre-presented in a set, and stripped
down to inessentials like an Edward Hopper:

The glass of wine, the meal I require
become the mind’s main focus – here, or here?
And if I talk to someone, I wonder
Whether what I say is pivotal, or

whether it’s true you call the things, where
what you are could alter what you were.


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Incompleteness Rises

Incompleteness rises



It’s what we don’t know, crowding in on us,
That heals by not making sense:
The books we haven’t read, the tense hiatus
In a film’s dialogue; our own silence

That works better for us than a slick bonmot.
Incompleteness rises as if by deception –
The hero meets a girl he doesn’t know
And follows her to make a strange confession.

They fight on a beach; stones rain from nowhere,
Falling in sand create a random pattern;
And the soundtrack is a jazz trumpeter

Sweats on a solo, prevaricates the turn,
So that we don’t know which way, or where
The climax comes – each moment crazier.


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silk bus, stone world

silk bus, stone world..

Like a silk-sailed bus on a Sunday route
sticks to the frozen flux, a moment in which
a flower overflows its trough of stone,
stone basin in an urban park – orange
flares across its petals like a sun –
so much stone world, I stoop over its little form,

my good old camera stuck with masking tape,
the sense of being watched – is it their rigor or their torpor
that affects me like the closing of a drape?
With one colour it has done so much,
like a promenader with a yellow head-scarf;
and its beauty is set off by a fault
like a cigarette burn near its centre,
and at the centre a bit of stone shows through.

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