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...

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...

Twixt what is there and what we see resides, he felt, reality. Corneal scars upon his sight scatter bright dendritic light, a retinue of...

Regard this tea pot with great caution It hides its history calmly steaming With its teacup and its milk jug Tea endorsed by Dr Johnson...

I had a dream this night That I was at a conference Of eminent men who could Pontificate on any learned topic. I had been quite...

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...

Argy Bargy Dear Sir, Why not let the Argentines have one Falkland Isle and we the other? (Billy Hill aged 6) Frigates knife the swell, a...

I skidded on my Lambretta Near the Champs Elysées Speeding past Citroens, Peugeots, Renaults, you on board, Do you remember emerging From...

For Francis Thompson Here on the green square’s edge At a point of silence listen, a quarrel of sparrows in the covert, a distant mower,...

The nature of the sickness found Ulysses What is the answer …? Does Fear hold the world in balance, Intelligence inform the will? Do we...

Bedside Companion A painting by Klee hangs over my bed, Man, rake and sphere frame a sinister head. A cornered pilgrim digs into the...

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...

Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image ... Ten Commandments in the chapel, in the apse or on the crossing, are whitewashed or...

It happens from time to time, Listening to other people’s lives, This sudden knowledge of a state You share. You have no common Memories...

With Tess when she was small Down into grassy ditches The soft path tipped us, And hid for a moment the view Of the crown of the hill,...

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

Windows Three faces face outwards, surprised by their master who renders them timeless as they pursue business (no business of ours)....

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...