Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
All of the names of the dead are Celtic
or English. Most of them died – in the prison
near the river – from typhoid rather than wounds.
Nobody set out to be cruel – farmers’
sons killing farmers’ sons. Their graveyard
above the bluffs was grassed, an obelisk built,
their names cast in bronze, bolted to limestone.
From the highway, there is no signage.
Eagles winter on the bluffs. America’s heart
is green and fecund: a confluence –
Illinois,
The Dodo, Ustad Mansur, Agra, 1610
For Sarah: always a conservationist, latterly a twitcher.
i
In Umbria – the cuore verde of pristine, wooded hills,
Orvieto’s honey-pale wines,
the paintings of Perugino and Pisano,
the Tiber’s milky jade,
tartufo nero –
they stew thrush.
ii
At least once in our suburban garden,
Blondin carrying his manager, Harry Colcord, on a tightrope.
Witness The Great Wallenda, an aging
high wire artiste, who, for his final act,
required technology’s summation –
tv, automobiles, bottles of plasma;
crossed a canyon on cable thin as a wrist;
walked on wire a quarter of a mile
above the earth. He stood, twice, on his head
and the crowds of thousands gasped, then cheered,
the noise muffled in that oh! profound gorge.
Hear them, silent on the leads,
watching their comrades,
the ensign, the corporal and the private
shot by firing squad
amongst the elms in the graveyard below.
Under the leaves in the summer,
Cromwell’s New Model Army
was practising democracy,
selecting all ranks for exemplary death –
the only leveller.
A lark starting from the heather; a lamb
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.
Fanny Adams' grave, Alton cemetery, Hampshire
After the fluorescent shops and the snatched music,
the side street was damp and dark –
but a bag of chips and a manipulative adult
made the emptiness freedom.
Waterways were trawled and the usual,
time-dishonoured suspects questioned.
Down river, high tides returned her nine year old body.
The funeral cortège was a carriage and horses
and the local press was effulgent.
But gossip condemned her single mother,
LLANDWYN, YNYS MÔN
THE BOX BROWNIE
SOUTH STACK, HOLYHEAD ISLAND
THE PIER, BEAUMARIS
THE RABBI AND THE EMPEROR