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Died Amsterdam, May, 1988
The warm dark red wine flows out of the mouth, the trumpet smooth against the face’s map, the cracked voice like broken stone: My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine…
The trumpet wine rich and smooth, and the kind light glows warm on the gold of the horn, smooth against the cracked stone of the broken face. Unphotographable…
Europe in Springtime, a new window every day, tomorrow another town, another gig, another sidewalk. The trumpet’s wine flows red, warm out of the mouth. Stay little valentine, stay.
in New & Selected (1981 - 2009), Time Between Tides, Rockingham Press, ISBN 978-1-9049513-3-2
The door opened into a space.
I heard stillness offer itself towards the shape of a prayer.
Coming out of light, we return after all.
In the meantime there’s silence, white paper between words going where noise of words cannot, present even under these days, a space just beyond the next door.
in New & Selected (1981 - 2009), Time Between Tides, Rockingham Press, ISBN 978-1-9049513-3-2
Ice under flowers meeting frozen air – forbidden thoughts, words not to be spoken of this conjoining. Maker – all makers, carpenters, all makers of bulwarks against nature - these doctors – pit props only, only enough to stave off collapse for now – flex muscle, all sinew, makers challenged – whatever your skill world once energised more than matches you.
Moving across the flood plain a new perfection. Can it be music? It might indeed be music, a cold music growing colder. Such austerity is beautiful, But the music of diagnostic fact contradicts a summer. As light fails, each thing becomes its own world, shadows build emphasis but each was always alone. Sliding over the lawn, cold front promises a blue sky, But moving through accumulations towards an inevitability.
First imperceptible voile across understanding. Together in your garden, your lost smile – I turned away because I could not speak. First fingers of frost as the glass falls.
Twenty one roses on the Standard bush by the kitchen door. This October’s ice is early – roses but no leaves, cold crawls in. No leaves – all goes to make a final flower.
What is it experiences this? We have been here before on the shore as a ship recedes from a place of touching to an infinity.
Pitted against this fade I only ask what bids me think? The beach wintering, wintered clink of lines on metal masts in the wind. But I am moving now out over and beyond my own bay, bucking on chopped water. The chime of masts fades. Beneath tides’ surface remains a mystery, deep soundless beyond the harbour, out on the winter sea I forget I quite forget how I set sail,
what I left.
in New & Selected (1981 - 2009), Time Between Tides, Rockingham Press, ISBN 978-1-9049513-3-2
Samphire Hoe, Kent King Lear, Act lV, Scene Vl
Gloucester’s imagined cliff, Samphire, murmuring surge, a dizzy horizon gleaming along its edge,
sunlight dazzle blinding a gaze on the far sea, persuading memory that it saw a man fall,
time between tides rushing towards darkness, the first beginnings of distance from this chalk’s white flower.
He is falling, falling down into the story of the rest of his life, gone into the seascape,
the wide pewter bowl, cold, dull at the rim, turning, a single figure framed in the cliff’s spun moment,
seeing the universe flailing through air bright for the love of Samphire, living to tell the tale
that recollection breeds illusion. ‘Though we may contest against gulls’ flight, our own self will crush us.
Beneath imagined cliffs the fact of rock, sullen under resignation – inevitable impact –
the final gasp seeing what we were spinning off into debris, fictions broken by gravity.
in New & Selected (1981 - 2009), Time Between Tides, Rockingham Press, ISBN 978-1-9049513-3-2 |
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