The Winter Palace

Most people know more as they get older:

I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century

Losing what I had learnt at university

And refusing to take in what had happened since.

Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces

And swearing I've never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage

To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold in to itself, like fields, like snow.

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don't have any kids yourself.

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss

I part thick curtains, and am startled by   

The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie   

Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.   

There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow   

Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart   

(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate—   

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!

O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.

The hardness and the brightness and the plain   

Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain   

Of being young; that it can’t come again,   

But is for others undiminished somewhere.