Christmas 1142
Good Henry’s mother is leaving, lowered by a rope from a castle wall, barefoot into the snowy night. …
Shadow Dance
My shadow kissed your hands’ shadow as the sun set. Your hands’ shadow put the shadow of a grape…
The Silence of Nudists
I watched an old nudist tonight wading from the bank of the river, his frail limbs the glowing white…
The Burghers of Calais, after Auguste Rodin
Connoisseurs of the smart move, appraising the prices of commodities and men, they stepped up against their instincts, their…
Louis MacNeice
That saturnine, mercurial Irishman would sit in bars and scribble lines on beer-mats, not bothering tra-la to scan mechanically…
Triptych for their Mother
I OLWEN MAY After the cow parsley, after the may, into midsummer as pierce-eyed as a sparrowhawk there in…
Bluebeard’s Wife
Bearing my unicorn’s horn Above my plucked forehead Bare as an egg – Flood silver, pouch of gold The…
Anniversary
A year past her death my watch went haywire, not the hours but the days and dates – jumping…
Terra Nova
Go to the garden gray with granite cobbles where daisy, fern and dusty miller wince in sun, where indolent…
Hedge School
Schooled under the same sign Arduus ad solem – your Latin better than mine – we thought it too…
Northern Territory
We were at the lake’s edge, nothing for fifty miles. September and the first freeze glinting between wet stones,…