At Twilight: A Poem
Nobody will come, nothing will change, The day will continue to drag its hours Through dusk, evening, then the night: The cold will intensify, lodge in flesh,…
The Shovel & the Song: A Poem
Chinquapin fields yielded more than just rows Of okra, cotton, or tobacco leaves Seventy years ago. A boy with hands Borne to work like shovel and spade…
The lecture: A Poem
I’m counting down the lectures I’ll never give again. Last week it was “Christabel,” Coleridge’s weird Gothic fragment. Did he really have a thing about lesbian sex?…
From Duncliffe Wood
1 We lie now in absolute stillness: I see this hollow of the wood, These trees, as if they were Joined with us - we with them…
Liberalism: A Poem
I retreat, yet I never quite escape. Hellish hounds, so familiar with our scent, Exhaust us till our very soul is spent, Then drink the spoils of…
In Isaiah’s Sandals: A Poem
Thus spake the herald: Look upon this holy hill; Where the sun spills over ever so brighter, Where waters leap over rock like flying buttresses Where the…
from Spiking the Canon: A Poem
Ulysses The critics give it ten out of ten, the literary equivalent of Zen. Is it Joyce’s folly or his ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’? Perhaps you should…
Enough: A Poem
Poor Catullus, end this idiocy; put a full stop to the story. It’s all over. True, you had days of blinding sunshine when she led you time…
Not Vanity: A Poem
It is not difficult to define the place that physical labour should occupy in a well-ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core. - Simone Weil…
Above Troy
From here you look down On the whole spit that divides The harbour from the coast, And see the long ocean beach, The littleness of buildings In…
After Ithaka
Keep Ithaka in your mind as you head in the opposite direction, Whether by choice or chance or just the way the wind blows. If you are…
Litter: A Poem
A small, billowing, clear plastic bag With a press-strip closure – one Strip yellow, the other blue – now Open-mouthed, accompanies me, Tumbling beside my footfalls For…
The Literary Life: A Poem
The future wants a story, romantic preferably. Dying young, promise snapped: that will do admirably; So, too, will suicide (cryptic note, if possible), or an overdose, a…
One Breath: A Poem
Somewhere in the antipodean blue The old salt sea rustles anonymously Darkened by nocturnal ink Busy and dark the currents, the old fingers Wedge themselves into sea…
The Tombs of Kha and Mirit: A Poem
(Egyptian, c. 1500 BCE, now in the Turin Museum) i Everything you would need and perhaps more: a game of senet, for two players, with its perfect…