told me I had subtle abnormalities

of the heart: a tendency, possibly,

to soften too readily, be swayed

too easily, feed on fantasy, harden

like the Pharaoh’s; be of kings, of lead, of oak,

of darkness;  bleed for my country, belong

to Daddy; be a lonely hunter;

be displayed on my sleeve; be in my mouth,

in the Highlands, left in ‘Frisco, buried

at Wounded Knee; like Luther’s, who feared his

was like a ship upon a stormy sea

driven by winds from heaven’s four corners.

a shammus staking out history,

death’s sleuth. The past has bequeathed itself,

its deceiving legacy of meanings.

Here is the evidence, thronging the cramped,

provincial streets – the line of a wall,

family remembrance, an ancient name.

Before terraces and villas, before

canal and railway, under pavements

and metalled roads, beneath fields is lost heathland,

a forsaken brook. There are only stones

and ghosts and the heart’s testimony – childhood,

ambition, emptiness.

Once, when she was very small, a dream woke me.

Dawn, iron cages, a tiger and the eager,

little zoo keeper reaching out to pat it…

She slept soundly, her menagerie too:

balding princess, purblind bear, Mummy -

though not Daddy now nor, in the garden, Fido.

Oozing kapok, hair eroded by

loving, his one eye tarnished but keen like

small expectations, he kept faith by the swing.

Love’s unreason maintained such shabbiness -

and left him out all night. Barefooted,

I fetched him in by the handle. How love’s

confusion aches the heart!

a shammus staking out history,

death’s sleuth. The past has bequeathed itself,

its deceiving legacy of meanings.

Here is the evidence, thronging the cramped,

provincial streets – the line of a wall,

family remembrance, an ancient name.

Before terraces and villas, before

canal and railway, under pavements

and metalled roads, beneath fields is lost heathland,

a forsaken brook. There are only stones

and ghosts and the heart’s testimony – childhood,

ambition, emptiness.

amazed by a heron; a hare gutted

at a turn in the road; the familiar path

obscured by fern, bramble, convolvulus:

the gallery in my head is open

all hours – by turns, thriving and derelict.

The sparrow in my chest, where my heart lay,

now flings itself at broken panes, now stills.

At the end of the pier, where steamships docked,

black-headed gulls and anglers watch and wait.

The steel-faced laughing man will read our stars.

Under the planking, the jelly fish glide.

My heart is a fist clenched in darkness,

a sea-anemone in coral waters.