The world enters in flashes, Like the sun through wickerwork, As they sit at the table, Arboured together. A pump handle tips, A mirror spills light, A stooled mumble Leans on the bar. But they in their integument Meander in the air Build delicate patterns Over the beer mats. An ease of exchange - Too long lost? - shapes A geometry on which fall All the tremors of the room. Scrapings of chairs, Smell of fusty leather, Spume of conversation At an adjacent table. Fragments trem

Eyes open Close your eyes when dawn is falling Listen to truths you prefer not to know Open eyes wide when the dark is rising Discover...

Arnold was wrong to say the old feel no emotion, None! They feel, but not perhaps the joy which Coleridge said he lost when still quite...

Today I heard a Quaker say That God reveals Himself. In every avenue of nature. Why, at wide or narrow Meeting roads (where Sons slay...

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

So he is gone And he sighed as he went And you have no right To assume what that sigh Might have meant, What it means To those who were...

It seems so brief a time On a January day You came into the world And bawled in no uncertain way You were here to stay. Now a well-known...

Tom, Tom, our daughter’s son, what and who will you become? It is quite clear that you will be someone quite different from me. On the...

How we get used to things. The tarnished cigarette case Bearing my initials, Grimy in interstices, Tobacco grained from cigarettes Smoked...

Do not question, said the Pope, the God-engendered bang. In the beginning He Was, and so is Now; without Him we are puffs of smoke, all...

The tide has not yet swept the littered shingle, Green and red buoys mark the channel, Pitch in scuds of rain. Violet fells Flow west across the quicksand bay; Cranes of Barrow perch on the white sea, Peer at the underglow, pick at the light. This scene for you my father, Harbours no past. Signs drift from meaning; All is grey matter. Images impinge, Do not sink in. The present and the recent, Even now the distant past recede; The rusting dredger calls it a day. Fresh mud clo