Guest Poems

England, Ice Fixed, White with Rage

From a train, always train, acres of whiteness, and I watch
Past or future, fields of time, seen/unseen, fields of it, the present
Refuses, I only want it more, and gods of modest means,
Not first rankers, not famous ones with monuments
Made to last, just simple ones who cling to earth

For all they’re worth, in hope of temporary displays,
Goldfinch drops kernel of grain, vole nuzzles closer in flesh
Of her flesh. Ordinary gods frantic for toe-hold in a hard frost,
Fearful of low pressure, storm, these gods, I know it, I know,
On the look-out for me. Such temptations, ironies, stillness,

I could make a painting of copse, ash, oak, seen/unseen,
But even if if if, no painting should dare still a living thing.
And poem? All the whiteness of page, its own kind of rage,
I cannot find a start worthy of devotion, an offering,
I too become slush, stains, soon enough, but still,

I should like to say categorical, just once, visibility so bad
Only getting worse. Or maybe just embrace fog, all blurs,
That too shall pass; tree, god, goldfinch, vole, window, glare,
All I cannot see/unsee lifted, a vapour, frost lost
In merest glimpse of sun, white light such, such damnation.

Small Rain, the Sound of Breathing

The way a little too much caution
creaks the floorboards more than clumsiness –
so the rain, tonight, small spatters, all around the house…

The way I ease the body-weight
of last night’s sleep to the edge of the bed…
Its cartilages crackle at the shift. Love, the dream of deft,

of as-if-casual moving, may be beyond us from here on.

The skill will be consideration –
all I’ve learnt of the shapes of the dark, the heft
of a mattress, a chair, familiar as my own extremities,

the door’s slight stick and shudder
like my heart does sometimes… All I want
is to give you what’s left of the night. Considerations:

as if there was only one breathing between us

so that either might catch
the sound of the other’s, hold it, place it
back beside them in a still-warm imprint in the pillow

undisturbed; as bird migrations
in their season might pass over frontiers
with no more sound than small rain, a flickering

of not-quite-so-dark in the dark, while the border guards sleep.