Uncle Alfred returned from India, With a carved cigarette box, Then slumped in his socks On our worn leather sofa, Within the bay window,...

The house was real is now a dream, Where we lived a while in summer light, And occasional Midi rain. At breakfast, When we rose, the...

At a quiet end of day and year, Through a sky of porcelain blue, A plane buzzed like an insect, Travelled south, drilling the distance....

When you are young there is a place For regret. The past is close And sometimes can be remedied. With age we grow bitter, recall What we...

After Grandfather went funny He took me for a morning walk, Looking neither left nor right, Straight across the Great North Road....

Four of them walked across grass Beneath and between trees And they signed to us: Do not Walk on the obvious graves, As we strolled past...

Out of the mind's mud runs A narrow road through grassland. Behind colourless trees, Riflemen point nervous guns. At the vanishing point...

The mind is a vestry door with a bishop's name. Knock, you will get no answer but enter and sing a hymn. It may help you sleep lest you...

Brecht, back in industrial Germany, after a trip to the countryside, gazed through the sooty air at the grubby rows of houses and said,...

So it gets to you, too, Almodovar the pain in the locked spine and sadness, as you bend on the forestage listening, to your rounds of...

Clearances? Don’t like the term, a Highland chief protests in chiselled English voice. The English did not clear Scots out. They went...

Here in this quiet house all sleep, And I give time to memory, Hang a sepia photo on a wall, Pull sketches on brown paper From a drawer....

An oily smear on a still pool. A friend obliquely watching Drew close and said: How beautiful! Perceive the rainbow pattern On the...

I drive into the wind in border country and quickly traverse names upon the map I'd thought large towns, but find dwindled to mere...

Speracedes Easter '91 Seeking a quiet grave In the evening light We took the lower road Where the old lavoirs stand And the stream still...

Ice-pick gone, feet first, face down, Malory slid, clawed at the scree, Skewed to a halt, humped miles up, Like a cuttle bone on a beach,...

Two figures stood waving goodbye, The man, my father, one foot in the gutter, Watery blue eyes more apt to fix on nothing But fixing now...

Who can deny hubris when writing of love? Who can define its quality, its chemistry? Would some kind of litmus test explain elusive...

The objects are not beautiful The rooms not well proportioned, The house not chosen for itself, But for what could be seen from within....

The large and paunchy man, with straddled legs and slippered feet, paddling across a hotel floor to sit because he cannot stand, evokes...