Monday 27 June 2011

A gust of wind


















A gust of wind came in from the sky
and threw your face from the windowsill
the face that bore me through life, until
this moment. Must I now say goodbye?
One day, when I was looking elsewhere
a gust of wind blew away your picture.
You left me again, or did I leave you?
The pills help to take away my fear
they have deadened the pain of your leaving.
My eyes are open – a new clarity
comes from my unaccustomed sobriety.
Tonight, I have left behind my grieving
for the face that it still smiling at me
from a broken frame. Must you go, really?

Wednesday 15 June 2011

The streets of London
















For Patrick

Tollgate, workhouse and coaching inn
Open their doors to let you in
Beneath the cobbles and the mud
Are Mithras, Edgar and King Lud
The cabbies' horses, milk and hay
In London's fields not far away
Before modernity began
Legionnaire and highwayman
Streets are undressed – the world you see
A city clothed in history

Note: picture shows Ludgate Circus, where King Lud is buried  (allegedly)

Monday 13 June 2011

Mood swings


















Dispensing light and dark
Drunkenly, they sway and lurch
Like lunatics, across the park
Like the gates of a great church


Burgeoning with dark and light
They swing open to let us in
One moment it's day, then night
They announce salvation and sin


They weep, silently, on the grass
In an emotional drama
Is it tragedy or farce?
Above us – a panorama


The clouds switch and flash in the sky
Like Wagner or an English air
But in what kind of mood am I?
Complete joy or utter despair?

Saturday 4 June 2011

Footsteps and shadows – the story of a house

















It was built where the Great North Wood
Lapped against London – rus in urbe
Dairies, market gardens and clay pits
Farms and then houses, a suburb

The railway arrived – brick villas
Clustered thickly around the station
Goodbye to the telegraph and horse
Victoria dies – a coronation

They started our house and finished it
War came. Light fell across the wall
Millions were born. Another war
Footsteps and shadows. Voices in the hall

Radar, the bomb, nuclear technology
We breached sound but not light
Daily, the sun flickered across the wall
Marking the passage of day and night

All those years, no-one noticed
Stars or geology; soft words were spoken
Voices in the hallway rose and fell
They will do until our light is broken