The day after your uncle turned three, The world changed. Standing on Euston Station, Another uncle in your grandma’s arms, A siren’s wail, the war’s first sound, Sent us hurrying underground. The passengers stood serious and hushed. A porter took the child, and we waited. A false alert began the phoney war, The year Yeats died, and the Beetle was born, And Joyce sent Finnegan rejoicing at his Wake. The wind came out and blew him in again, Above that empty entrance hall, Behi

Sustained by strong black coffee, He sits there immobile On a rickety chair on a rickety platform, Under the warning, watchful eye Of...

Suspend your disbelief. This Is not a rock, a boulder or a stone About to drop. Magritte Is there to fool you into truth, A kind of...

A door bangs and a telephone rings, Someone laughs and someone sings And somewhere a jazz trumpet plays. The outside enters in other...

When Butch and Sun Dance shot from their corner, Firing from the hip with each hot cylinder, Then froze into a sepia still, the movie...

She lives today who might have died had you not taken that particular path, under the tower, across the vacant square, past registers of...

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...

Another line in your forehead daughter To add to those deepening there After time you consider wasted Or at least in its lack of effect...

Above the ramparts of Iford Hill, The sun dipped low in a green sky, Rodmell Church lay between trees, And up the valley a cold wind...

for Auntie Maddy A roar past the carriage window Hurries on westwards. In the silence pursuing, Two lovers continue A distant wooing, Strolling Land’s Endwards. Against the moving meadow Two tired blue eyes appear. They bid me welcome, then inquire Why are you here ? Soon enough she knew, Put me in a box, best place, she said, And shut blue eyes for good. The lovers trundle out of view But here against fresh waving trees Her old eyes journey on. They gaze From foliaged happi

for Karlheinz Stockhausen They say Karlheinz asserts The greatest work of art was when The 767s destroyed World Trade But opines that...

For Dick Fosbury, 1968 Olympian Gold Medallist With a step, skip and hop he went over the top with the Fosbury flop. In eight or ten...

Where is that masterpiece at which he laboured Wherein the lines of landscape and of figures Concealed an emptiness he tried to fill? The...

When he was small Leonardo Formed a scene upon a shield, From crickets, fireflies,bats, Lizards, glow worms, serpents, And delicate wings...

The countryside lay empty. A signpost leaning towards him On the right hand gestured skyward And westward at the ground. He found on...

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...

TV is a chatterbox, a scatterbox, a patterbox, a blatherbox, You could say a doesn’tmatterbox but that’s not true today. Once we had a...

When he set up his easel, As often before on the hill Above the Chemin des Lauves, Clouds gathered over Aix And storm cones flew. Cézanne...