Poems

Miklos Radnoti, marched from forced labour
in Yugoslavia back into Hungary, came to rest
near a bend in the Radca, at what his translator
describes as ‘a strange lonely place’ where

You set down orange, with a dab of blue
and this grows into art
of a non-offender’s kind,
innocent as a fart in the footy crowd.
Meanwhile, the killing stumbles on

Waiting.
Starched hospital gown.
Frozen present tense.
Why am I smelling
tigers?

for Bryan Ennis

‘To in the destructive element immerse’

The kitchen vessels that sustained
Your printed books, my poems, our life,
Are fallen away. The words remain –
Not all – but those of style and worth.

Imagine the moment of hesitation:

the catch in his voice,

                                   knowing

he could not turn back: after years

up and down the river, a request

What works you did will be yourself when you
Have left the present, just as everything
The past passed to the present must become
A terrible unstoppable one blend
Of being there (the world) and not to be
(The Self). Grow old along with me, the best
Is bet to be – the worst (of course) lack(s) all
Conviction, as the poet mistranscribed,
Storming a grave to satisfy his pride.
They love me, all my words, despite how often
I made fools of them, betrayed them, begged
Forgiveness of them. They are like the million grubs
Which swarm around their Queen. I file them in
Wide boxes where they wait their Master’s Voice,
Accusing and defending. A letter plans
To burst in sullen flame, its heat conserved
By what was written once – but chiefly silence
Triumphs under missing banners – death
Will be the one unmentionable
Impossibility. What happened lives
Parenthetically and privately.

It’s before I got the wandering eye.
I daydream I’ve already left:
without her each morning I’d be able to wake,
stretch in bed-warmth, blink used to light, not lie
feigning sleep in case she cradles my back,
her lap flexing for my elbow to lift
to take her arm onto my chest. I keep still
until she shadow-dresses upon the wall.

I stare from my study window into trees.
Considering all things, I watch the first snow spill
White seeds across the rubble where the barn
Towered over us with its cracked spire
For almost half a century until
Some feckless pot-head changed
The whole thing into fire.