Celia, the Sea Does Not Remember You Waves are not waves But the convulsions of a body That has forgotten the bones it conceals. The sea a wound that refuses to close. Celia goes there because the sea soothes her. She goes there because the air cools her. She observes gannet and curlew As one watches The slow collapse of a star. A big black sea bird stands in the surf Like an officiating priest. Its eyes are two shells Filled with the residue of night. Around it, strands of t

Uncommon One in the garden of statutes where rules multiply like weeds & stones lie about like scruples every step is a misstep in misadventure my ways are not steadfast nor my path clear fallen fruits ripen towards a crisis break a snail underfoot & the roses shiver disaster crush a flower with your heel & the frogs croak catastrophe offend the sun with a dismal glance & the heron broods at the water’s edge disturb a duck egg in the thick grass & the elms grow misty all

Re Joyce (James) O happy days Ireland does re joyce A gnol a devol a nur reviv Upfinnegan w/ (s)laughter He hung up St Jimmy O’Sinner of Dublin, O fella no Bloom- Ing flower, petals crushed In Molly’s coddled bed His ruptfirm godlike (Ya, H C E) Twicer he hollowed onaphone Linguefiction’s penman is Shaun to a quill, Sing T, even stephen She Anna runs along the river lippy yes now Here she comes here comes everybody Now Is yes

She Stands Alone She stands alone, a single bulb lighting an entire room, the walls curved into her private sphere. No doors. No windows. No-one can break in. Her world is the only world and all things lie within her scope, sealed within her soul. Solitary appetites she pursues in consecrated isolation, in this her sacristy, her prison, her cell — an inside with no conceivable outside.

Private Language In / creasing thought, the self doubles / folds inwards, suppose a private language against the world’s shared grammar — self-authored, a book written for no . one. A page torn away, stains in the margins, a footnote wrongly numbered, the letter ‘i’ faintly printed. Such is the pain of the man who yearns for his whole self between the covers of biography and meets only estrangement.

Speaking of England Who dares speak of England unless he has first swallowed a coal from Albion’s fire? It is the world above our sight, The visible in sovereign light, Set ever against the world below Where shadows come and spirits go. It is the land that Albion won, A giant, Neptune’s wandering son; He held the realm for his own fame And gave to poetry his own name. It is the words the dead bequeath, Rhyming couplets between their teeth; A land where time and

Poetry Isn’t Trending Out of fashion now — The long hours spent Making and doing, Turning and shaping lines, For a dwindling clientele Of other poets and academics Who might notice The grain of a line, A phrase honed smooth Or left rough as timber. No one else cares to look. And yet the trade persists — If trade is even the word — Since there is nothing to gain. A dying art Like the fletching of arrows, Or the mending of clocks With a dex

Dreams, Memories, Visions Of life as a ‘story of the self-realization of the unconsciousness’ ... p. 17 Digging up bones and a little light in fog ... pp. 104, 107 Walking through a valley to hand a goddess an umbrella ... pp. 155, 161 § Of trees as the embodiments of life’s incomprehensible meaning ... p. 86 The bitterness of Freud and the analogy with God ... pp. 75, 175 A white dove transformed into the ghost of a customs official ...

The Beast Between the Marble and the Heap, Or: The Mammoth Between the marble wall of City Hall and the slow‑rotting heap of broken crockery and dusty old books — the beast stirred. To think it once tore open the earth with its tusks, raising mountains, or guarding the spirits of the underworld. Now its fur rotted to a brittle husk — the mammoth preserved without reason — the mammoth. Among the first of God’s works, it had been among us from

Pillars of Ash In the beginning Nature had no voice. Then the gods threw a pest Of fire called language Upon the world And are watching it as it blazes. Now fire clings to the palate, Burns the throat. The smoke of rhetoric smarts our eyes. Tongues of fire consume the page — Paper curling into ash, Perusing fingers sifting to ash, Bodies stiffening into ash, Pillars of ash that’ll topple and disperse In the coming wind and rain.

Before the Clocks Struck Three (Mr. Eliot Had an Apparition in Salford and It Was Very Foggy) Salford is the rainiest place, getting Inside my shoes, wetting Tired feet in undarned socks. Yesterday, before the clocks Struck three, three old horses Munched wet grass Among the relics Of Clifton’s Wet Earth Colliery: Which on reflection, Were beautiful objects Of rust, time and toil. Fog swirls, curls Around the clock tower, The quays, the trees —

No God but the Gold Forged in the Furnace of Flesh: A Poem on Jacob Frank Jakub Lejbowicz slithered east Beneath a heretic’s curse. A worm of rot, crowned in Ottoman dust, He wore another man’s face — Berukhiah reborn Jacob Frank, Westerner of Podolia, Messianic pretender. In Salonica, blasphemy transmuted: Sin kissed the breasts Of someone else’s wife. Torah pressed into palpable skin, White fire turned utterly black. Apostates writhed. A tho

If the Rain in Warsaw Sounds Like This From a secret they shaped A room in London— A breath of space Lit by a single candle’s hush. Out there the war was cold, Close to freezing. But they were warm within. Stillness gathered. They listened to icy rain Softly striking stone— Each drop a touch, A covert word Only they understood. It was a fragile pact: Two selves from opposing worlds, Folded into one, Briefly, tenderly. Then a man fro

Let His Dwelling Grow Let him retain his secret self unseen— A quiet core beneath the outer guise. His thoughts drift far, where none have ever been, Untouched by earthbound sound or sorrowed cries. He shapes his fate by sovereign will alone, And spends his hours by choice, not blind decree. Yet boredom gnaws the pleasure of his throne And drives him forth through mists no eye can see. There in the vale, he finds his kindred near, Who sense he will not linge

Atoms and Void There is no body without void – Epicurus I You’d have thought it endless, Lucretius— The laminar descent of atoms Falling through a void serene and mute, Each atom unhurried, alone, Descending at a constant pace, Unmoved by force, untouched by will, No dawn to break their quiet fall, No god to stir the silent dark. But then—a swerve, a subtle bend, Two atoms veer, incline, and meet, A fragile sign of nascent will, A fracture within fate’s per

I See a Red Rose “I see a red rose” shows us three things – “I” – a simple fact of consciousness Or awareness; “See” – shows the sense Of our action. And, within that act Of seeing, we have The concurrence of perceptions (Color, shape, quantity, etc.) Considered as a single thing – “A Red Rose”. “I see a red rose” – You see, There’s nothing romantic about it.

All the World Was Broken: An Ecopoem On weightless air, the cocksure ravens flew. Wild sheep chewed grass; deer And bison chewed too. On a slanted hillside white mountain goats Enjoyed a lofty view. In forests, eucalypti, fresh-minted, grew. And fire-green firs with purple cones, Did too. For the silver-studded starfish there were oceans Wet with green and blue – And oceans for the whale and dolphin too. On blackest soil, the man called Adam grew His

The Selfish Self I am my world – A world apart. Apart from me there is nothing. The world is mine. It arises from the uniqueness of my life. My life is the world and the world Is how things stand. And how things stand is my life – And only my life. What counts is me. I number myself: A one wrapped inside a zero. I stand alone, a single bulb Lighting the whole room, Enclosed by walls that are my sphere. I have no doors or windows. No

A Ghost As If I am not your keeper O ghost who crouches At the grave of my father. The body is dead; it is in the shade. A pale figure with a sheet for a robe rises from the earth (His hair black as ravens' feet). With cold-clay fingers, He could quell the soul’s fire. As if. A seagull cries In the salted air Like a baby Calling for its parents. There is blood on the land, Blood in the rivers too. You are not what you appear To thi

The Soul Moves The soul moves & by small degrees Of slow calculation Actuates the two substances That are body & mind. First operation is the entry of light Into dark, of dead limbs Galvanized by the sun’s power; The second is of vast dreams cut short By a harsh & loud noise, Like a fire alarm at the cinema – Enfolded in stillful bliss no longer, Soul, body and mind sit up blinking, Grudgingly resurrected – Otherwise known as waking up.