The Funeral of Shelley - Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889 (Trelawny is standing first left) Smoke hung on the sultry water, Dirty rags under black lines Lay on the horizon When the cast off. What devil Made them hoist the gaff topsail? Satan brewed mischief in the air As Williams and Shelley Slid into the haze. I drowsed in the heavy afternoon, Woke to a scrape of anchor chains And a general stir of ships. Boats scurried to and fro In the near dark. Drops of rain Rebounded from

Clod, lump, patch or fool Larding the earth when caught At last by that crocodile. No matter how oft Punch Raps his head, he is dead But he won't lie down. The ticking clock Which pursued Captain Hook Will one day stop And Hook will find No crock of gold At his rainbow's end. The bony jester Takes by the arm The deathless pretender, Dons costume and bells And hauls him below To cure all ills. The antic Hamlet hears The songs that Yorick sang, Plays with the chops Where lips o

Out of the mind's mud runs A narrow road through grassland. Behind colourless trees, Riflemen point nervous guns. At the vanishing point...

So it gets to you, too, Almodovar the pain in the locked spine and sadness, as you bend on the forestage listening, to your rounds of...

Who can deny hubris when writing of love? Who can define its quality, its chemistry? Would some kind of litmus test explain elusive...

for Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth The echoes of a gift thought lost haunt the approach of age as a forgotten page...

Veiled in fixity four minutes on a plinth, Hermione listens as Leontes and Paulina discuss her statuesque long silence. Time is...

W B Yeats Men’s hearts of old were drops of flame, Who could have foretold the heart would die? Yeats wrote one day in his noon-tide dream. When Hardy viewed his wasting skin, His grieving gave his heart the lie - A gift that age had reserved for him. Time consumed Yeats’ fragile frame, He bade his friends to heave no sigh, And burned on like the midday sun. The evening flame turned no cold eye, It throbbed as the horses’ hooves drummed by. ©Terry Hodgson2020 Thomas Hardy

Faust again attempts some puny wonder, but a papier-maché church, set, cast and city wall, a plaster castle built on high, they all...

Translations by Terry Hodgson On the Branches of the Willow Trees And how could we sing With an alien foot set on our hearts Among the...

In the Aux Trois Quartiers She fingered scarves and laces, Smiling at some secret joke As shoppers sidled past In the heat and boulevard...

He sought meaning where a peaceful sea turned grey and a storm-swept brig leaned black against the sky. Two broken crewmen stooping,...

(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...

For William Golding Hunched behind a lectern This man in yellow shirt And bright blue tie Derides processional ants Who carry through the streets Inflated idols. Blue eyes glint Impiously above brown rims, A tide of gleeful epithets Cut by casual colloquy, Punctures idols of the tribe, Needles the worshippers. Marx crumples at his pin-pricks, A door thuds; an ant has exited. The voice asserts it fears Its own asseveration, But flows on undisturbed By such departures. Wonder i

When the rupture came, Soren Kierkegaard found loss not absolute. Connection persevered. Regina was given back To that corkscrew mind, In...

The safety curtain creaks aloft A gradual hush descends The audience settles to enjoy The wars and loves of Troy, Interpreted by...

Imagine Fletcher, chatting with Shakespeare, ageing at fifty, saying: What about this Spanish bloke, Cervantes? Quixote’s made a stir at...

Pensive and alone I tread the empty strand, Measuring my slow and heavy paces, Searching while intent on human traces In footprints left...

Dawn knocking woke up Troilus, Time bundled up his Cressida, the leaving was not easy, yet to Time he had to leave her. No twin trumpets...

E vietato in Otranto calpestare l’erba but over the cathedral floor, from the great west door, feet trample the Serpent, limbs of the...