such words some words are prayers in themselves no need of a long breath to know their song vesper evening star such words are worked in gold in grief in shadow of the fallen day in sky found of morning ocean mountain star some words we take into dreaming enfold with love’s heavy cloth…

         tianjin from the deck you saw the wild blue. knew the full wind of an open sea the city astern lying fast in the haze. saw the blue unable to rid that haze open the heart-to-shit street of days to the blown clearness above. saw a swallow hit the gusts off the waves a…

Some here cry when the donkey comes, clopping on the seal, rangy hills at his back. Each year he does this; by day he is Seamus, at bugle’s call, he is Simpson’s steed, to remember the man, the deeds. He is led by boys in khaki, over-size trousers buckling at the ankle, and he has…

I I’m sick with emptiness; excess; an ambivalence I can’t express, ever; one day some fine/blade may sever that vein/for me to tell, until then listen well if you will.   II Some…nameless one remains: an inner eye; living corpse, half- hid in the undergrowth; enemy within, who knows what I think, I thought was…

Cut   Bless my suffering cut short, shorn like lawn on long summer days.   Tedious heaven.   These hours of suffering are swathed   by an eternity of days:   was, will be. Bliss.   There’s no death but how to tell it?   Last night was all one to me –   Whitman…

On days such as this the road is a black mirror, rolling out hard and long into the distance, ridges bars of bouncing light, the tyres hot, thrumming on coarse chip and the birds weaving in the high thin air against the sky; the hot air a brush on your face and teasing your thoughts…

Sagging kapok beds, sea’s wash and moan, sun yellowing papers, streaming over our lives, wishing for nothing more, no will to move; anglers in works gumboots, white and stolen crossing a shingled shore to whip high rods at sun. We watched lazily, the lazy, as kahawai died bled  in the sun. Something to do. On a…

A high ceiling in spring, white with a filigree border and genteel conversation floats over earl grey and the waitress’s apron rises and falls with her light step; tea and cakes, spilling cream, a man with a silly hat and ill-fitting hand-knit jersey trying to impress his mother – or his maiden aunt. The traffic…

first meeting* based on Reiner Stach’s description of Franz Kafka’s first meeting with Felice Bauer (see page 100, ‘Kafka The Decisive Year’s by Reiner Stach, translated by Shelley Frisch) only a few words yet enough to put you out to sea silly boy you liked her to the ‘point of sighing’ you spilled out to…

          white cross on sea* για ο,τι μου δόθηκε απο την καρδιά αυτού του λαού, απο τον ήλιο τους, άσπρη  καρδιά της θάλασσας for what was given to me by the heart of this people, by their sun, white heart of the sea they had it hard as any land’s lot ever was forced to…

The road here slants west, carving to the hill, past the tender tumble down homes, past the crouching thatched cottage in its frozen secret place; beyond the flinty corner whose face bends the wind. It is a place of endless shadow, prickled frost. Time has put an edge on this land – hardened it and…