Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
‘O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe, and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ Francesco Petrarch
Somewhere near the estuary of the Don,
with its mudflats and meanders, north
of the Sea of Azov, and somewhere
near the Volga Delta, with its pelicans
and flamingos, north of the Caspian,
on the steppe lands are black rats and fleas
and yersinia pestis. The rats
like human warmth, and the fleas can leap.
For John Chapman
I can see for miles across the wolds, low hills
receding. The top of the rise is a field
of stubble that was rape. I imagine
last year’s sweet scented, false meadow of sharp
yellow and green. On the field’s far side
a flock of wild geese is grazing the stalks.
The cloudless, cerulean sky, empty
of con trails, seems closer, domed, as if curved
like our planet. In an ancient copse,
below the rise,
‘We are the guests of life.’ Martin Heidegger
‘In ancient Greek the word for ‘guest’ is the same as the word for ‘foreigner’: xenos. And if you were to ask me to define our tragic condition, it’s that the word ‘xenophobia’ survives, and is commonly used, everyone understands it; but the word ‘xenophilia’ has disappeared…’ George Steiner
For Cicero books were the ‘soul of the house’.
The Ancient Romans knew a thing or two
about staying safe in uncivil times.
Nevertheless on his way to sail abroad
the lawyer,
For John Plummer
‘History is a people’s memory.’ Malcolm X
It is VE Day. Though those who still survive –
the eye witnesses – tell angrily of waste
not sacrifice, what should have been a day
of the dead, and the maimed, and the displaced
worldwide is here one of tea parties, sing-songs –
while the toll mounts as if it were the first day
of the Somme. They lied then. They are lying now –
On the notice board of the Methodist Church –
on the opposite side of the street
from where I sit at my desk typing this –
is a poster. It is a colour photograph.
In the foreground is a wooden five bar gate.
Once I am certain there are no prisoners,
like me, at their exercise – voluntary
exiles walking their dogs in the middle
of the road avoiding others in lycra –
I go over for a closer look.
‘He beheld the city, and wept over it.’ Luke 19.41
We went up Mount Vesuvius by bus,
and stood on the rim of the crater
watching gases emerge from fissures.
We bought two bottles – a red and a white –
of the local wine, Lachryma Christi,
for a fellow atheist from the gift shop.
As we walked back down the fertile slopes – the sea
before us, hazy, tranquil – we heard
a cuckoo. All of Campania seemed stilled –
GUESTS OF LIFE
CONTAGION
GUESTS OF LIFE
THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE
THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE