Solitary trees On the hill's cap, Leaves on the turn, Civilise the space Which scours above This ancient place. Clockwise he walked Round flint and chalk, Still needing much To talk and touch. It sufficed not That he knew why The world ran dry. The blackbird sang, Flint did not lack When the pit was dug. Danger filled it in again, Grass grew and sank Under the rain. He could not trade Weapons unused, Chip the soiled flint, Wield a bone spade, Dug from the earth, Of no current

With what impudence that cloud hangs there, Complacent puff-ball figure, Sailing east with pendulous belly. But wait! A swollen darker form sails near, Glowering fatly, jaws agape, Long fish-tail lifted scorpion-like. Down here the birds continue cheeping, An ornamental wind stirs flowers, And chimneys quietly exhale. Elsewhere refugees swarm south, Haul and trample one another, But here the shadow play goes on: A cloudy duck sails backward, Scattering into gunsmoke; A sharp-

Ice-pick gone, feet first, face down, Malory slid, clawed at the scree, Skewed to a halt, humped miles up, Like a cuttle bone on a beach,...

Epiphany Flecks of rain adorn the glass; a fluttering chaffinch clings to a swinging twig; Atlantic winds buffet each leafless bush, and...

An image forms upon my screen, an orange ring around a void, black centre of our Milky Way where lies, a confident voice declares, the...

A learned Fellow on my screen declares that life was born in the cosmic background. Unseen light irradiant stretched above a hot and...

(translation of Der Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke) No more can he take in, his hooded eyes tire of looking out through iron bars; he...

A key, a telescope, a drum, A watch, a plate, a teacup or a knife, Objects have lives if we look closely, They are yours and not yours,...

The gibbous moon Hangs above aerials In a rich, blue-black, Shading to violet sky. Titania dreams; The silent shrubs regard her; The Sea...

Mortar powders the floor, the wall leaves a chink, and a water pipe to clink on to the neighbour cell. Or should I turn to watch the sky,...

Digging in clogged earth, after rain, Mud clings, roots cling, Unlike the mandrake, shriek not, Ribes, ten years in the ground, Beauty...

When the Beagle went to sea Fitzroy fixed the route by GMT With John Harrison’s marvellous clock In a box which stemmed the roll The...

Objects carry their history and our own - A drum let’s say, which traversed the Atlantic Or a telescope longue vue, Piercing the...

Quite intentionally made Sense-armoured by their mental trade They view the heavens with aplomb In their high probing towers from Which a...

A time to look back on A time to look forward A song to sing sweetly Whose words make us mourn When a shadow lies heavy When in winter...

I heard an ancient whaler say The story should go round Of how the whaling trade was run Before they all went underground And proud he...

I have a friend who smells a flower and says I do not see its beauty, claims I murder to dissect. But since I know much more than he, of...

You paint too fast, said Paul, But Vincent insisted. Speed,Speed is my gift. Look, That blue blur the kingfisher - King .... There, there...