Villanelle

Every day our bodies separate,

explode torn and dazed.

Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate

and touch each other, speechless and amazed;

and every day our bodies separate

us further from our planned, deliberate

ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate




when our fused limbs and lips communicate

the unlettered power we have raised.

Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.

In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,

not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late


morning as the wind tears off the haze,

not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.

But I Can't

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,

And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Ghazal

                          after Hafez

However large earth's garden, mine’s enough.

One rose and the shade of a vine's enough.

I don’t want more wealth, I don’t need more dross.

The grape has its bloom and it shines enough.

Why ask for the moon? The moon’s in your cup,

a beggar, a tramp, for whom wine’s enough.

Look at the stream as it winds out of sight.

One glance, one glimpse of a chine’s enough.

Like the sun in bazaars, streaming in shafts,

any slant on the grand design’s enough.

When you're here, my love, what more could I want?

Just mentioning love in a line's enough.

Heaven can wait. To have found, heaven knows,

a bed and a roof so divine’s enough.

I’ve no grounds for complaint. As Hafez says,

isn't a ghazal that he signs enough?

Field

Easternight, the mind's midwinter

I stood in the big field behind the house
at the centre of all visible darkness

a brick of earth, a block of sky,
there lay a world, wedged
between its promise and its conclusion

some star let go a small sound on a thread.

almost midnight - I could feel the earth's
soaking darkness squeeze and fill its darkness,
everything spinning into the spasm of midnight

and for a moment, this high field unhorizoned
hung upon nothing, barking for its owner

burial, widowed, moonless, seeping

docks, grasses, small windflowers, weepholes, wires

Snake's Heat Organ

Earth after sun is slow burn

as eye scales darken.

                                 Water’s no-burn.

Smaller sunlives all dim slowly

to predawn invisibility

but self-digesters constantly glow-burn.

Their blood-coals fleet

                                        glimmering as I spin

lightly over textures.

                                       Passenger of my passage

I reach round upright leaf-burners, I

reach and follow under rock balances,

I gather at the drinking margin.

Across the nothing there

                                            an ardency

is lapping blank, which segments serially up

beneath the coruscating braincakes

                                                                   into the body

three skin-sheddings’ length of no-burn negatively

coiled in a guttering chamber:

                                                 a fox,

it is pedalling of now,

a scintillating melon,

                                    gamboge in its hull

                                    round a dark seed centre

and hungry as the sun.

Cell DNA

I am the singular
in free fall.
I and my doubles
carry it all:

life's slim volume
spirally bound.
It's what I'm about,
it's what I'm around.

Presence and hungers
imbue a sap mote
with the world as they spin it
I teach it by rote

but its every command
was once a miscue
that something rose to
Presence and freedom

re-wording, re-beading
strains on a strand
making I and I more different
than we could stand.

St Augustine's, Penarth

The church is like the prow
Of a smoky ship, moving
On the down channel currents
To the open sea. A stone

Figurehead, the flowing light
Streams from it. From everywhere
You can see Top Church, remote
As high church is from chapel.

Church high on the summit
Of the climbing town
Where I was a child, where rain
Runs always slantingly

On streets like tilted chutes
Of grey sliding on all sides
From the church, to sea and dock,
To shopping streets and home.

Breasting the cloud, its stone
Profile of an ancient priest 
Preaches continuity
In the face of turning tides.

in other words

The Egyptians loved the cat

were often entombed with it
instead of with the women
and never with the dog

but now
here
good people with 

good eyes
are very few

yet fine cats
with great style
lounge about
the alleys of
the universe

about
our argument tonight
whatever it was
about
and
no matter 
how unhappy 
it made us
feel

rememember that
there is a
cat
somewhere
adjusting to the
space of itself
with a delightful 

grace

in other words
magic persists
without us
no matter what
we may try to do
to spoil it.

Carol

Until I wander'd through the world

I did not know

That even in Bethlehem

Falls the white soft snow.

Then I did imagine how

A morning long ago

Reflected light from all the land

Flooded through the door.

And lit the spidery rafters

Above the sleeping child

Whose eyes were lifted up to

A mother mild.

And such a radiance was around

On ass and munching cow

Some said because a child was born

And some because of snow.